In - Your Guide to College Admissions from The Princeton Review

Get Documentation for Your Learning Disability

Don’t suffer in silence.

If you think you might have a learning disability, it behooves you to get tested.

Students with documented learning disabilities qualify for accommodations at school and on standardized tests. This assistance can significantly boost your odds of admission to college.

Visit GoLocalProv for more info.

College-Search Tips for Students with Disabilities

U.S. News recently posted an article on the additional factors students with disabilities should consider when researching colleges. Click here to check it out.

Looking for a place to start your school search? The IN blog has profiled five excellent options from The K&W Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Disabilities or Attention Deficit Disorder:

• American University
• Marist College
• Rochester Institute of Technology
• University of Arizona
• University of Denver

Want to get learning accommodations in college? Check out this series of posts on IN.

College Students Abusing ADHD Drugs

Doctors frequently prescribe stimulants—e.g., Ritalin, Adderall—to help students with ADHD.

Unfortunately, in a recent study at the University of Michigan, a remarkable number of college students with ADHD said they abused such drugs.

In the study, 40 percent of students with ADHD said they had misused their prescribed stimulants within the past year. The most common type of misuse was overuse.

Click here to read the study’s abstract in the journal Pharmacy Practice. To learn more about ADHD, check out this article on the Huffington Post.

Even More Admissions Advice for Students with Learning Disabilities

On the road to college, students with learning disabilities face questions beyond the usual ones on essays, tests, and majors.

To help students on this road, Marybeth Kravets, co-author of The Princeton Review’s K & W Guide to Colleges for Students With Learning Disabilities or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, recently participated in a Q & A on the New York Times blog The Choice.

You can check out all five installments of the Q & A with Marybeth right here: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

More Admissions Advice for Students with Learning Disabilities

On the road to college, students with learning disabilities face questions beyond the usual ones on essays, tests, and majors.

To help students on this road, Marybeth Kravets, co-author of The Princeton Review’s K & W Guide to Colleges for Students With Learning Disabilities or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, is answering questions on the New York Times blog The Choice.

The Q & A with Marybeth is running all week. Check out the latest installments from yesterday and today, and submit your questions for Marybeth here.

College Admissions Advice for Students with Learning Disabilities

On the road to college, students with learning disabilities face questions beyond the usual ones on essays, tests, and majors.

Should they disclose their learning disability to colleges? If so, how? And which colleges would provide the best support for their disability?

A recent article on the New York Times addresses these important topics. It includes great advice from Marybeth Kravets, co-author of The Princeton Review’s K & W Guide to Colleges for Students With Learning Disabilities or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Click here to check it out.

For additional info, check out this week’s Q & A with Marybeth on the Times blog The Choice. You can submit questions for Marybeth here.

How to Address a Learning Disability in Your College Applications

How much or how little should you disclose? A recent post on the College Planning Blog tackles this question head-on. Check it out here.

Navigating College with ADHD

If you’re a student with ADHD, how do you get settled in college when so much is new (and potentially distracting)?

A psychologist—and former college student with ADHD—recently provided the following tips:

• Find and use your college’s Disability Services office.
• Take advantage of your school's free tutoring and writing centers.
• Be careful about disclosing your ADHD to your roommate too soon.
• Try to keep your room (or side of the room) neat.
• As much as possible, use direct deposit for paychecks and automatic withdrawal for bills.

To read more about each tip, check out this article on the Huffington Post.

For more helpful advice on getting accommodations in college, click here. If you haven’t yet applied to college, click here to read about schools with great services for students with ADHD.

Many Students with Disabilities Attending College

If you’re a student with a disability who is considering college, you should know that you’d probably find a community of peers at the school of your choice.

According to data recently released by the U.S. Department of Education, 88 percent of colleges currently enroll students with disabilities. Here’s the distribution of the disabilities reported:

• Specific learning disabilities, 31 %
• ADD and ADHD, 18%
• Physical health conditions, 18%
• Mental or psychiatric conditions, 15%
• Difficulty hearing or seeing, 7%
• Other, 11%

Click here to read the full report from the Department of Education.

Schools for Students with Learning Disabilities or ADHD: University of Denver

This spring I’ve put up a series of posts about the transition from high school to college for students with a learning disability or ADHD.

If you’re one of these students but you haven’t yet applied to college, you may be wondering which schools might make this transition a little bit easier for you.

To let you know which schools really go the extra mile for LD and ADHD students, I’ve profiled a handful of the best over the last several weeks. Each of these schools is featured in the current edition of The K&W Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Disabilities or Attention Deficit Disorder.

All feature highly structured services and all employ staff certified in learning disabilities and ADHD. At many, the LD/ADHD staff director is directly involved in admissions decisions; as a result, admissions requirements at these institutions may be more flexible.

If you’ve received one or more significant accommodations in high school, any one of these schools would be an excellent option for your undergraduate education.

The final school in this feature is the University of Denver in Denver, CO. (Check out last week’s school—the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ—here.)

School: University of Denver

Program name(s): Learning Effectiveness Program (LEP)

Goal of services: To provide students with individualized support, to develop cognitive strategies, and to reduce anxiety about learning in a college environment.

Offerings: LEP counselors work one-on-one with students to determine their learning strengths and develop skills that will make them successful university students. Three crucial areas of skill development are encouraged: self-advocacy, articulation of strengths and weaknesses, and independent learning strategies. Students are also taught nontraditional study skills designed to increase reading, writing, and memory.

Duration of offerings: Until graduation.

Additional application for LD/ADHD students: Yes.

Total undergraduate enrollment: 5,314

Total number of students receiving LD/ADHD services: NA

To read what undergraduates at the University of Denver have to say about their school, check out the following comments, taken from The Princeton Review’s Best 373 Colleges guidebook: