Liz: You
Sarah: hi. So we have a guest today and she is graciously luckily called Elizabeth because thank you. that we are not going to have to go, which Liz, me, you, so Elizabeth, we have Elizabeth Hamlet here. And did I say Hamlet right? Wow. I'm very proud of myself. The bee is not silent. That's fantastic.
Elizabeth: Yeah, yeah, That beam is not silent. It is not.
Sarah: I love a good, a good bee, you know, just rolls off the tongue. So,
Elizabeth: Right? A good, phonetic last name.
Sarah: yeah. Good, good, good. so I, we have talked a lot about emotions and feelings and navigating difficult things and Liz and I actually don't, right Liz? I mean, I'm not trying to speak for you, but we don't have a lot
Liz: It's okay, let's hear it.
Sarah: of explicit expertise when dealing with accommodations, kind of the more academic side. And in college, a lot of these things have what I would think of as like a Venn diagram. Sometimes they're housed in a counseling department. Oftentimes they're in a totally different department. It can be really difficult to navigate. Because of that, Liz and I, in our work are often talking to people about accommodations or making suggestions or writing letters to advocate for it. But we're not experts in it per se. You we don't know the nitty gritty. And so we decided to go out and find that person who's an expert. And we're really lucky that she said yes to talk to us today. She wrote Seven Steps to College Success. And it is a wonderful book for anyone who feels like they need to navigate it. There's appendices in here. Like any question you have is really answered
Liz: Right.
Sarah: in this book. It's an amazing resource. and so I, we're lucky to have Elizabeth here and welcome to our show.
Elizabeth: Thank you so much for having me. I am a fan of your show, so it's really exciting to be here.
Sarah: Yeah, I think that it, especially when we talk to a lot of people here, it kind of mirrors what happens when you're working with college students and young adults because they have a lot of people in their life who are really important. And oftentimes there are ways that things overlap. And one of the things that Liz and I see a lot is that transition from having accommodations in high school that people get really used to, that there are a lot of laws around, even though they're really confusing. Technically, there is a pretty good structure to what is kind of deserved in a public school, for instance, like an IEP. I'm going to start saying a lot of numbers and letters, an IEP or a 504 plan. But if you're listening, you might know what that is, right? And then you get to college, and that transition is quite different. And it's a lot of discussion around how to access those, et cetera. So this is what we were here to kind of pick your brain about today. What are the most common accommodations that students have access to in college. And perhaps how might that be different than what they have access to in high school?
Elizabeth: Sure, and just to be clear, because you mentioned IEPs and 504 plans, one of the most common myths is that either kind of these plans transfers or travels to college.
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: And so it's very important to of ground this conversation in the fact that IDEA, which is in all this alphabet soup, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. under which students get an individualized education plan, IEP, does not apply to colleges. And so whether your student ages out of the system at the right time or graduates with a diploma, they no longer are covered by IDEA. So IEPs don't have any legal bearing anymore. They don't... create obligations for colleges. And confusingly, Section 504 covers K-12 and it covers colleges. But K-12 schools are under subpart D and we are under subpart E. And they're very, very different mandates under each one. And so even though it doesn't say so explicitly, 504 plans also don't have any legal bearing once your students graduate. And so as you started by saying, Sarah, there are accommodations that students might be getting in high school to bolster their success, but
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: that are not going to be available at college. So, you know, the extended time I like to be very, very specific is four in-class exams.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: So as long as it's something that's happening in this sort of concise amount of time, students with relevant disabilities affecting their processing speed or their academic fluency, You know, if they have physical disabilities that affect their ability to handwrite, they might get accommodated with a laptop and or extended time. So that
Liz: you
Elizabeth: is something that is commonly requested and we don't have current data on this stuff. There's a longitudinal study that ended in 2010 that looked at this and found that I think it was 18 % of students got. that accommodation in college. And it's sort of a complicated discussion about how many students actually requested accommodations.
Liz: Right?
Elizabeth: So, you know, I won't dive us in for that, but believe it or not, that was like, you know, a common accommodation at that percentile rank.
Sarah: Mm-hmm. And so there's the sense too of, know, and I think what Liz and I see a lot is which accommodations do you think that people have in high school that they're the most surprised not to get once they get into college?
Elizabeth: Right, so that is why I'm very specific about extended time for tests. So extended
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: time for papers and projects, anything done outside of the classroom. In this same study, 72 % of students in the cohort had this accommodation in high school and only 6 % got it in college.
Liz: Hmm.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: And that is a really, really big one. And so... Deadline extensions, extended deadlines, more time, however you want to phrase this, is something that doesn't happen. And, you know, it's in various degrees of deadline, I guess. I'm not really sure how I got there. But I was thinking about, like, one of the things that comes up is discussion board posts, you know,
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: where they are supposed to read something and then write
Liz: Yep.
Elizabeth: something and then also respond to a classmate's response, like, those can't be extended because everything is supposed to be happening somewhat in real time. When it's long-term projects, it's because they have a lot of time to get things done. And while we recognize that difficulties with time management are part of executive functioning, know, ADHD, we still expect them to manage that time. being late to class is something that we generally don't approve. There may be some, what we call attendance flexibility, but it's not always just because an accommodation exists that it's available to every student who's going to ask for it.
Liz: Mm.
Elizabeth: So usually the extended deadlines, for instance, it is rarely approved, but from what I have seen from my colleagues, it is for students with physical or mental health disabilities that have unpredictable extreme flare ups, where
Liz: Hmm.
Elizabeth: at the time of a deadline, they are just unable to finish what they were hopefully theoretically doing at that time. But it's not commonly approved for learning disabilities, ADHD, autism. And the attendance flexibility is also for the same kinds of students that I just mentioned. but not for students with ADHD who are impulsive and will go get a coffee with friends instead of coming to class. So
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: the bar to get certain accommodations, even if they're available, may look very different at the college level than it does at the high school level. And that's something to think about.
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: I know one big thing that is, and there's no stats on this, but just from the amount of traffic about this in my community. my community of professionals online, a single room is something that
Liz: Yeah, housing,
Elizabeth: a lot of students want for a lot of
Liz: Cough
Elizabeth: reasons. And, you know, there are colleges that have sufficient singles for all the students who want them. And then there are others that don't. And so the bar for who gets that will be high. You know, not being able, something that students ask for is like to be exempted from group projects.
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: And that is something that perhaps some of my colleagues are doing. I've never seen data on that, but very often part of what the professors are, you know, trying to measure and have them, you know, experience as part of this class is working with other people. Sometimes in certain fields, it's critical to what they're studying, you know, that the expectation will be in engineering or,
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: you know, other kinds of work that you will work with a team. so, you know, and this comes down to this, a notion of fundamental alteration. in the, both in the text of section 504 and in the ADA, there are exemptions, of categories of exemption. They don't specifically say you don't have to do this accommodation. Although what they do say is that we don't have to provide anything that constitutes, and I'm paraphrasing, a personal service or device. So a student who is used to meeting with somebody like me all the time, I am certified by my state as a special ed. What am I? I'm a learning disabilities consultant.
Liz: You
Elizabeth: know, colleges don't have to provide anybody like me to students because that would, even though it doesn't say this example specifically, that would be considered a personal service. They do mention readers for personal study. So a student who perhaps would get a test read to them,
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: because again, we're in class, this is a situation where we control the environment entirely and we have to make it accessible. But more often I would think we would give that student a disability services and I'll use the abbreviation DS provided
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: laptop that's loaded with text to speech software. and have the computer read it to them, except in cases where, you know, some of these science and math exams. But that would be more for, like, students with visual disabilities, where it would
Liz: Mm.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: be more likely to get that human being. And in fact, if I can just pull it up here, the reader accommodation, I think, was much less commonly approved at that level. let me see if I have those. No, I can't see find it right now, but anyway, it's in the appendix. Go read it.
Liz: Yeah. I mean, yeah, Elizabeth, when you just talk about this, I mean, I just imagine and we obviously see it. I don't think a lot of students and parents are prepared for both informal and formal accommodations that happen in high school that like they just kind of like assume that they're going to be available to them. Right. And I think that. Yes.
Elizabeth: That's a really interesting point. Yeah.
Sarah: Right. And make college decisions based on that, in a way, and then get really flustered, understandably,
Liz: Yes.
Sarah: when that
Elizabeth: Yeah, and I think too, well-meaning. It's everybody involved in this is well-meaning, right? So
Liz: Right.
Elizabeth: whether it's public or private schools, although it, you know, just anecdotally in the reports that I read, it seems like private schools are more likely to informally accommodate rather than public schools that have all those systems in place for
Liz: Right.
Elizabeth: who gets qualified. So. They do this with good intentions, but history alone, which is also kind of the point about the IEPs and 504s, is not gonna be sufficient at a lot of places to get you accommodated.
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: so students who may never have been formally evaluated for a disability may find that they have to be in order to get accommodated at college. mean, before they even get to us and test optional has certainly swung back in the other direction in the last couple of years,
Liz: you
Elizabeth: but it used to be that they had to anyway, if they were seeking SAT, ACT accommodations, and then that sort of relaxed. And so it's sort of all over the map for that. But the informal accommodations too, I think what can be tricky is that, you know, sometimes they're not necessarily, in my opinion, tied to what the effect of the disability is on the student's performance.
Liz: Right, right, right, right.
Elizabeth: And something that we're discussing currently in my community more and more is this, students saying, well, I can do my best if I am relaxed on a test. So it's maybe helpful framing to think about how we approach accommodations. And let me just stop for a moment and say. Nothing I'm saying today is legal or medical advice. You know, I've been in this field for more than 20 years. And so this is what I get from being active in my community and seeing what my colleagues are talking about. But there are more than 4002 and four year colleges in the country. And so obviously your mileage may vary, right? So what I'm talking about today is my understanding, but there's a lot of variation in what goes on. And so when it comes to certain accommodations, students being able to feel more relaxed, the way we approach accommodations, myself and some colleagues, is how does our environment create a barrier for a student and how is it affecting them differently than their neurotypical peers, right? So we expect students to be anxious on tests. We may not
Sarah: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: see it as an appropriate goal. to make sure a student, and how relaxed will they ever feel? And I understand
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: when we're talking about generalized anxiety, this is a trait state. My understanding,
Liz: Right.
Elizabeth: and you guys are the therapists, is also that avoiding situations that make them anxious is not
Liz: I know.
Elizabeth: generally part of the treatment, right? So the not wanting to do group work, not wanting to come to class, that kind of stuff. We're not, yeah, please. No, no.
Sarah: Right. And actually, so sorry to interrupt, but I just realized, no, we are, that topic in general, right? So we've talked about things like group projects, test anxiety, extended time. There
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Sarah: are some people who absolutely need it in order to produce the work that they actually can understand and to really get a full education and to be able to show their work product, right? For instance,
Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: like a visually impaired student. or someone who has documented low processing speed, meaning they do things more slowly than many
Elizabeth: Documented. Right.
Sarah: people, they understand
Liz: Right.
Sarah: it, but they have some version of evil. And as Liz and I, can sort of do more alphabet soup, right, or diagnosis soup maybe, but there are people who have ADHD, but there are also people who have ADHD and that includes something like. low processing speed. And
Liz: Right.
Sarah: so therefore, in order to get out the information that they have in their head, they might need longer time. But I think we've all seen times when there are accommodations that might feel helpful or kind of a cure-all, extended time, think, being the common one,
Elizabeth: Right.
Sarah: versus it being actually well-matched to what someone needs for that same person who has, let's say again, ADHD. but their processing speed is fine, whether they
Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: haven't struggled or it's been documented as fine through a psychoeducational evaluation, et cetera, right? They might actually be hurt by extended time. They're
Elizabeth: Right.
Sarah: gonna extend their kind of mental bandwidths. They might be helped by something more like prompting to return to task as opposed to extending the time and not using it effectively.
Elizabeth: No.
Sarah: Right, so I just, in general, what are times where you feel like there are accommodations that actually help the need versus, you know, that they're well matched?
Elizabeth: Sure. And I just want to say prompting is not something we're doing at the college level. Like we might
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: give a student breaks instead of the extended time.
Liz: Right.
Elizabeth: Right? So.
Sarah: but they might be able to incorporate their own method perhaps, like
Elizabeth: Right.
Sarah: a little buzz on their watch for instance, or something.
Elizabeth: Exactly. And Sarah, you also pointed to something important, which is the documentation piece. And that is an entire separate discussion. know, families are sometimes very surprised to find out that whatever they've presented to the high school or, you know, if they've been at the same school forever, may not meet the requirements at college. And colleges are allowed to set their own documentation. So I have a whole post on my website about students with ADHD. because they can be identified by so many different kinds of professionals. So if they get identified by a pediatrician in a well visit, that is probably, at a lot of schools, not gonna be sufficient. And part of what you were talking about is, this is a spectrum disorder. There are students who are very impaired by it. There are students who are mildly impaired. And what our job is, is to determine who has that substantial limitation. as outlined in the law. And so if we don't have objective measures that show us the student has slow processing speed, student has slow academic fluency, verbal fluency, all of these things, then we are probably going to require that in order to provide that accommodation. And also just
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: for your listeners, test anxiety as a standalone is not considered a disability.
Liz: Sorry, yeah.
Elizabeth: Yeah, so that is something that schools accommodate. Now, if you have a student who does indeed get so anxious before a test that they are physically ill, they are sweating, they are visibly, it would think it would be worth trying to document that as best you can with teacher reports or whatever and submit that to the college and see what they say. But just to be clear, is, you know, by a lot of colleges not considered a disability.
Sarah: Well, and also kind of breaking down the difference, right? So test anxiety, that is something that can be helped through some skills work, some practice. Liz, I'm sure we
Elizabeth: I heard.
Sarah: see this all the time, right? That test anxiety to your point, somewhat normal. You know, like it's normal to have some
Elizabeth: Yeah, yeah.
Liz: Yeah.
Sarah: anxiety. And if you're completely thrown by it, the only way to have an accommodation that fully takes care of that is to not have the test, which isn't really possible. Right? So extending the test, taking time if you need it in one way might help you feel less anxious about it. But ultimately to your point, test anxiety is essentially anxiety about performing well on something. And some people talk about, let's take test anxiety a little bit, that deer in headlights thing that happens where they have anxiety and they kind of forget everything that they've learned. That freeze response happens.
Elizabeth: Hmm.
Sarah: And so then they start to worry that they won't remember anything on the test. I've worked with a lot of college students and high school students and young adults as well who have to take something like the MCAT just to say, okay, we know that that's a common response. It doesn't mean you've actually forgotten everything. It's part of your fight or flight response and how do you manage that so that you can go, you know, use that, get over the wave of anxiety and then push through. There's not an accommodation that would necessarily help with that. it's more about using some skills and having some
Elizabeth: Mmm.
Sarah: insight into ways to manage it. So, so that's an idea for instance, like, yeah, it's not helpful to remove all tests because that means you have to remove all future
Elizabeth: And it's unlike.
Sarah: conferences where you have to give a presentation for your job or all future
Elizabeth: Right.
Sarah: job interviews, or, know, like those are things that in
Elizabeth: Hmm.
Sarah: real life, you would have to manage something similar. So it's a good time to
Liz: Yeah.
Sarah: learn a skill to manage it. I don't know, Liz, what do you think?
Liz: No, I was just going to say that I think we could talk forever about, in my experience, the overly used accommodations.
Elizabeth: NNNN
Liz: There's some districts in our area that are now hiring independent consultants to evaluate existing 504s because they feel like it's so easy to get extended time, other
Elizabeth: and yeah.
Liz: commonly seen accommodations. I think it's helpful for listeners to hear that like it might be a different review process it seems, potentially more stringent
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Liz: than what it looks like at the high school level. And I find and I'm interested in what you would suggest for listeners around college students really are unprepared I think for self-advocacy around like
Elizabeth: Anyway...
Liz: what documentation would I need? Like how could I prepare?
Elizabeth: right.
Liz: What do I need to know even before I set foot on campus in terms of like accessing disability services. So what would you suggest to a student that's like, okay, maybe nervous about the transition to college, had
Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
Liz: a lot of support and accommodations kind of in place to be prepared for what things might look like? And I know it's variable upon different campuses and I
Elizabeth: Good.
Liz: know there's certain programs some students kind of apply to, knowing that they need a high level of support in the environment. But what would be your, thoughts, like a kind of a checklist or to do, and there's some stuff in your book, I think that. is a good resource as well around this.
Elizabeth: Yeah, and I just want to circle back to something that you were both saying too about, know, Sarah was talking about strategy usage, right, by students who are anxious. And you're talking to Liz about preparation. Sometimes I have a sense that in the 20 plus years I've been doing this, at the K-12 level, we've moved, you know, away from providing students with strategy instruction.
Liz: Hmm.
Elizabeth: that we're doing accommodations and that's
Liz: Yeah.
Elizabeth: great, but that maybe we're losing the focus a little bit on providing the underlying skills that they need. And that is why the shift to college can really be a shock for some because
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: some of these students, as you mentioned, Liz, are accustomed to adult support. They don't develop self-advocacy. Sometimes
Liz: Yeah.
Elizabeth: parents are in a position to make
Liz: Right.
Elizabeth: sure that Every time a student sits down, there is an adult there and that they are, you know, helping the student organize, but not doing it from a coaching point of view of asking them questions and building their competence, but rather directing them. know, accommodations that we're not doing at the college level are where somebody else provides a study guide, you know, that kind of thing. And so I want students to, you know, come to us. prepared with skills and to recognize too, and this is something that we have in the notes for this conversation too, like you don't have to be perfect at all of these academic skills to be successful at college. You just need to seize debt, get degrees. And that's something that a friend of mine who's a psychologist always talks about. you just have to be pretty good, right? You have to figure out what works for you. But the notion that, know, neurotypical students come to class every day and take the most perfect notes and get on with, you know, they're the perfect at preparing for exams. It's just not real. And so
Liz: Real, yeah.
Elizabeth: what I think happens sometimes is when a student is
Liz: you
Elizabeth: identified with a learning disability, ADHD, autism, mental health disabilities that we look at these accommodations as a way of providing like a perfect environment for them, right? And making everything frictionless. And
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: what's interesting is the language of 504 specifically says, and again, I'm paraphrasing that, know, auxiliary accommodations are basically there to provide students with equal opportunity to achieve
Liz: Right.
Elizabeth: success, but actually not to guarantee success.
Liz: Success, yeah.
Elizabeth: And so when we get a lot of adults doing things for students so that it's a perfect study guide, it's a perfect set of teacher notes, we are both preparing them and sort of to me, like creating this ideal that they're gonna have of like, it's always gonna be the greatest set of notes. And a lot of students don't have the best set of notes, but they pass classes. So.
Sarah: Right. I think that you said something that was really interesting you mentioned seized get degrees.
Elizabeth: Thank you.
Sarah: and then the other part is by the way, any, anything that rhymes, I think just, just a great fact. I'm much.
Elizabeth: That's my phrase. My friend Ellen Bratton. Yeah.
Sarah: more likely to be like, OK, that makes sense. Do you get degrees? OK. But it's a good reminder that it doesn't mean you're failing. It might be
Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: a good learning opportunity to figure out what went wrong in that class so that the next one you
Elizabeth: sure.
Sarah: can improve.
Liz: Right.
Sarah: But we also see a lot of times even students who feel like Bs are failing in certain places.
Elizabeth: Yeah, wow, yeah.
Sarah: again, that's probably a whole other episode, just that
Elizabeth: Sure.
Sarah: idea of. perfectionism or what feels like achievement, but
Elizabeth: Is he?
Sarah: we'll wait for that for another conversation.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Sarah: For the people out there who feel like, my goodness, I have some accommodations, but I'm still struggling, or the people
Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: who lost their accommodations and didn't learn those strategies, what is your kind of top 10 or top five or whatever, whatever the number, your top 10 list of strategies that you think are really helpful for any student?
Elizabeth: Well, I'm going to cheat and say the first thing is to see what supports are available on campus. So,
Liz: Yeah.
Elizabeth: you know, that that that's a no brainer, right? Because even though they don't provide learning disability specialists, schools may have academic coaches or whatever they call them.
Liz: Thank
Elizabeth: Some schools and actually often that stuff is available from somebody besides us, you know, from the tutoring center. Is there
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: tutoring? go to office hours, does the TA have a review session, like all of the things that effective students do. And that longitudinal study, one of the analyses found that 50 % of the students actually only accessed the help and support available to the general student population, not accommodations.
Liz: population.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: So that goes to show you that it's possible. So,
Liz: Right.
Elizabeth: you know, things like time management and I have on my website under free resources there's a whole section that says tools for college students. Everything I use with my college and grad students is available for free there so students who don't have access to somebody like me can access it. So there's a whole time management piece. There's a discussion of SQ3R, the reading strategy, which is not disability
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: specific but is just a way of, you know, getting through text in one go. I've got some suggestions on highlighting, you know, goal setting to try and keep yourself on track. Like this is the time every single student I spoke to last week was like, I've hit the wall, I have no motivation, So like, how do you keep yourself going? You know, and to talk to somebody, there's counseling often on campus, so if you feel like you don't belong there, If you feel like everybody's having an easier time than you are, first of all, probably not, right? But it's hard to feel that way. just, you know, so that's, did I get to five yet? All right.
Liz: I think you did get to five.
Sarah: You probably got to 47 throughout this whole entire podcast episode.
Liz: Elizabeth, I love that everything's free and there's so many things you said today, at least like when I like I'm leaving. you know, I'm a huge, I think why Sarah and I are both behavioral therapists. Like I believe in self-efficacy, like people really
Elizabeth: Yeah. Yes.
Liz: feeling like they're capable of managing whatever situation they're in by learning skills or strategies. And so I hope it, we leave this conversation with some thoughtfulness around. it's not just a cure-all, accommodations aren't gonna like cure everything.
Elizabeth: for sure. Right.
Liz: then maybe when you are, you don't get, like Sarah said, the accommodations you were hoping for, you don't just give up or fall apart that like you recognize, okay, there might be a lot of other resources available to me on campus. There are also other academic skills that maybe I didn't learn in high school that I can work on developing in a college setting. So. So great, such a great conversation and something that I think like just
Sarah: Yes, thank you.
Liz: even our clinical practice, it's something that comes up a lot for us.
Sarah: And for our listeners, we will make sure to share these free resources in the
Liz: Yeah.
Sarah: show notes. I'll probably be checking them out now, especially that time management one. So going to kind of review that one. My family thanks you in advance as someone who struggles with that all the time. Elizabeth, thank you so much for your advocacy and your support and this wonderful resource.
Elizabeth: Thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure to be here.
Liz: Yeah. Thanks.
Sarah: hi. So we have a guest today and she is graciously luckily called Elizabeth because thank you. that we are not going to have to go, which Liz, me, you, so Elizabeth, we have Elizabeth Hamlet here. And did I say Hamlet right? Wow. I'm very proud of myself. The bee is not silent. That's fantastic.
Elizabeth: Yeah, yeah, That beam is not silent. It is not.
Sarah: I love a good, a good bee, you know, just rolls off the tongue. So,
Elizabeth: Right? A good, phonetic last name.
Sarah: yeah. Good, good, good. so I, we have talked a lot about emotions and feelings and navigating difficult things and Liz and I actually don't, right Liz? I mean, I'm not trying to speak for you, but we don't have a lot
Liz: It's okay, let's hear it.
Sarah: of explicit expertise when dealing with accommodations, kind of the more academic side. And in college, a lot of these things have what I would think of as like a Venn diagram. Sometimes they're housed in a counseling department. Oftentimes they're in a totally different department. It can be really difficult to navigate. Because of that, Liz and I, in our work are often talking to people about accommodations or making suggestions or writing letters to advocate for it. But we're not experts in it per se. You we don't know the nitty gritty. And so we decided to go out and find that person who's an expert. And we're really lucky that she said yes to talk to us today. She wrote Seven Steps to College Success. And it is a wonderful book for anyone who feels like they need to navigate it. There's appendices in here. Like any question you have is really answered
Liz: Right.
Sarah: in this book. It's an amazing resource. and so I, we're lucky to have Elizabeth here and welcome to our show.
Elizabeth: Thank you so much for having me. I am a fan of your show, so it's really exciting to be here.
Sarah: Yeah, I think that it, especially when we talk to a lot of people here, it kind of mirrors what happens when you're working with college students and young adults because they have a lot of people in their life who are really important. And oftentimes there are ways that things overlap. And one of the things that Liz and I see a lot is that transition from having accommodations in high school that people get really used to, that there are a lot of laws around, even though they're really confusing. Technically, there is a pretty good structure to what is kind of deserved in a public school, for instance, like an IEP. I'm going to start saying a lot of numbers and letters, an IEP or a 504 plan. But if you're listening, you might know what that is, right? And then you get to college, and that transition is quite different. And it's a lot of discussion around how to access those, et cetera. So this is what we were here to kind of pick your brain about today. What are the most common accommodations that students have access to in college. And perhaps how might that be different than what they have access to in high school?
Elizabeth: Sure, and just to be clear, because you mentioned IEPs and 504 plans, one of the most common myths is that either kind of these plans transfers or travels to college.
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: And so it's very important to of ground this conversation in the fact that IDEA, which is in all this alphabet soup, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. under which students get an individualized education plan, IEP, does not apply to colleges. And so whether your student ages out of the system at the right time or graduates with a diploma, they no longer are covered by IDEA. So IEPs don't have any legal bearing anymore. They don't... create obligations for colleges. And confusingly, Section 504 covers K-12 and it covers colleges. But K-12 schools are under subpart D and we are under subpart E. And they're very, very different mandates under each one. And so even though it doesn't say so explicitly, 504 plans also don't have any legal bearing once your students graduate. And so as you started by saying, Sarah, there are accommodations that students might be getting in high school to bolster their success, but
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: that are not going to be available at college. So, you know, the extended time I like to be very, very specific is four in-class exams.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: So as long as it's something that's happening in this sort of concise amount of time, students with relevant disabilities affecting their processing speed or their academic fluency, You know, if they have physical disabilities that affect their ability to handwrite, they might get accommodated with a laptop and or extended time. So that
Liz: you
Elizabeth: is something that is commonly requested and we don't have current data on this stuff. There's a longitudinal study that ended in 2010 that looked at this and found that I think it was 18 % of students got. that accommodation in college. And it's sort of a complicated discussion about how many students actually requested accommodations.
Liz: Right?
Elizabeth: So, you know, I won't dive us in for that, but believe it or not, that was like, you know, a common accommodation at that percentile rank.
Sarah: Mm-hmm. And so there's the sense too of, know, and I think what Liz and I see a lot is which accommodations do you think that people have in high school that they're the most surprised not to get once they get into college?
Elizabeth: Right, so that is why I'm very specific about extended time for tests. So extended
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: time for papers and projects, anything done outside of the classroom. In this same study, 72 % of students in the cohort had this accommodation in high school and only 6 % got it in college.
Liz: Hmm.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: And that is a really, really big one. And so... Deadline extensions, extended deadlines, more time, however you want to phrase this, is something that doesn't happen. And, you know, it's in various degrees of deadline, I guess. I'm not really sure how I got there. But I was thinking about, like, one of the things that comes up is discussion board posts, you know,
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: where they are supposed to read something and then write
Liz: Yep.
Elizabeth: something and then also respond to a classmate's response, like, those can't be extended because everything is supposed to be happening somewhat in real time. When it's long-term projects, it's because they have a lot of time to get things done. And while we recognize that difficulties with time management are part of executive functioning, know, ADHD, we still expect them to manage that time. being late to class is something that we generally don't approve. There may be some, what we call attendance flexibility, but it's not always just because an accommodation exists that it's available to every student who's going to ask for it.
Liz: Mm.
Elizabeth: So usually the extended deadlines, for instance, it is rarely approved, but from what I have seen from my colleagues, it is for students with physical or mental health disabilities that have unpredictable extreme flare ups, where
Liz: Hmm.
Elizabeth: at the time of a deadline, they are just unable to finish what they were hopefully theoretically doing at that time. But it's not commonly approved for learning disabilities, ADHD, autism. And the attendance flexibility is also for the same kinds of students that I just mentioned. but not for students with ADHD who are impulsive and will go get a coffee with friends instead of coming to class. So
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: the bar to get certain accommodations, even if they're available, may look very different at the college level than it does at the high school level. And that's something to think about.
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: I know one big thing that is, and there's no stats on this, but just from the amount of traffic about this in my community. my community of professionals online, a single room is something that
Liz: Yeah, housing,
Elizabeth: a lot of students want for a lot of
Liz: Cough
Elizabeth: reasons. And, you know, there are colleges that have sufficient singles for all the students who want them. And then there are others that don't. And so the bar for who gets that will be high. You know, not being able, something that students ask for is like to be exempted from group projects.
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: And that is something that perhaps some of my colleagues are doing. I've never seen data on that, but very often part of what the professors are, you know, trying to measure and have them, you know, experience as part of this class is working with other people. Sometimes in certain fields, it's critical to what they're studying, you know, that the expectation will be in engineering or,
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: you know, other kinds of work that you will work with a team. so, you know, and this comes down to this, a notion of fundamental alteration. in the, both in the text of section 504 and in the ADA, there are exemptions, of categories of exemption. They don't specifically say you don't have to do this accommodation. Although what they do say is that we don't have to provide anything that constitutes, and I'm paraphrasing, a personal service or device. So a student who is used to meeting with somebody like me all the time, I am certified by my state as a special ed. What am I? I'm a learning disabilities consultant.
Liz: You
Elizabeth: know, colleges don't have to provide anybody like me to students because that would, even though it doesn't say this example specifically, that would be considered a personal service. They do mention readers for personal study. So a student who perhaps would get a test read to them,
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: because again, we're in class, this is a situation where we control the environment entirely and we have to make it accessible. But more often I would think we would give that student a disability services and I'll use the abbreviation DS provided
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: laptop that's loaded with text to speech software. and have the computer read it to them, except in cases where, you know, some of these science and math exams. But that would be more for, like, students with visual disabilities, where it would
Liz: Mm.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: be more likely to get that human being. And in fact, if I can just pull it up here, the reader accommodation, I think, was much less commonly approved at that level. let me see if I have those. No, I can't see find it right now, but anyway, it's in the appendix. Go read it.
Liz: Yeah. I mean, yeah, Elizabeth, when you just talk about this, I mean, I just imagine and we obviously see it. I don't think a lot of students and parents are prepared for both informal and formal accommodations that happen in high school that like they just kind of like assume that they're going to be available to them. Right. And I think that. Yes.
Elizabeth: That's a really interesting point. Yeah.
Sarah: Right. And make college decisions based on that, in a way, and then get really flustered, understandably,
Liz: Yes.
Sarah: when that
Elizabeth: Yeah, and I think too, well-meaning. It's everybody involved in this is well-meaning, right? So
Liz: Right.
Elizabeth: whether it's public or private schools, although it, you know, just anecdotally in the reports that I read, it seems like private schools are more likely to informally accommodate rather than public schools that have all those systems in place for
Liz: Right.
Elizabeth: who gets qualified. So. They do this with good intentions, but history alone, which is also kind of the point about the IEPs and 504s, is not gonna be sufficient at a lot of places to get you accommodated.
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: so students who may never have been formally evaluated for a disability may find that they have to be in order to get accommodated at college. mean, before they even get to us and test optional has certainly swung back in the other direction in the last couple of years,
Liz: you
Elizabeth: but it used to be that they had to anyway, if they were seeking SAT, ACT accommodations, and then that sort of relaxed. And so it's sort of all over the map for that. But the informal accommodations too, I think what can be tricky is that, you know, sometimes they're not necessarily, in my opinion, tied to what the effect of the disability is on the student's performance.
Liz: Right, right, right, right.
Elizabeth: And something that we're discussing currently in my community more and more is this, students saying, well, I can do my best if I am relaxed on a test. So it's maybe helpful framing to think about how we approach accommodations. And let me just stop for a moment and say. Nothing I'm saying today is legal or medical advice. You know, I've been in this field for more than 20 years. And so this is what I get from being active in my community and seeing what my colleagues are talking about. But there are more than 4002 and four year colleges in the country. And so obviously your mileage may vary, right? So what I'm talking about today is my understanding, but there's a lot of variation in what goes on. And so when it comes to certain accommodations, students being able to feel more relaxed, the way we approach accommodations, myself and some colleagues, is how does our environment create a barrier for a student and how is it affecting them differently than their neurotypical peers, right? So we expect students to be anxious on tests. We may not
Sarah: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: see it as an appropriate goal. to make sure a student, and how relaxed will they ever feel? And I understand
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: when we're talking about generalized anxiety, this is a trait state. My understanding,
Liz: Right.
Elizabeth: and you guys are the therapists, is also that avoiding situations that make them anxious is not
Liz: I know.
Elizabeth: generally part of the treatment, right? So the not wanting to do group work, not wanting to come to class, that kind of stuff. We're not, yeah, please. No, no.
Sarah: Right. And actually, so sorry to interrupt, but I just realized, no, we are, that topic in general, right? So we've talked about things like group projects, test anxiety, extended time. There
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Sarah: are some people who absolutely need it in order to produce the work that they actually can understand and to really get a full education and to be able to show their work product, right? For instance,
Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: like a visually impaired student. or someone who has documented low processing speed, meaning they do things more slowly than many
Elizabeth: Documented. Right.
Sarah: people, they understand
Liz: Right.
Sarah: it, but they have some version of evil. And as Liz and I, can sort of do more alphabet soup, right, or diagnosis soup maybe, but there are people who have ADHD, but there are also people who have ADHD and that includes something like. low processing speed. And
Liz: Right.
Sarah: so therefore, in order to get out the information that they have in their head, they might need longer time. But I think we've all seen times when there are accommodations that might feel helpful or kind of a cure-all, extended time, think, being the common one,
Elizabeth: Right.
Sarah: versus it being actually well-matched to what someone needs for that same person who has, let's say again, ADHD. but their processing speed is fine, whether they
Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: haven't struggled or it's been documented as fine through a psychoeducational evaluation, et cetera, right? They might actually be hurt by extended time. They're
Elizabeth: Right.
Sarah: gonna extend their kind of mental bandwidths. They might be helped by something more like prompting to return to task as opposed to extending the time and not using it effectively.
Elizabeth: No.
Sarah: Right, so I just, in general, what are times where you feel like there are accommodations that actually help the need versus, you know, that they're well matched?
Elizabeth: Sure. And I just want to say prompting is not something we're doing at the college level. Like we might
Sarah: Right.
Elizabeth: give a student breaks instead of the extended time.
Liz: Right.
Elizabeth: Right? So.
Sarah: but they might be able to incorporate their own method perhaps, like
Elizabeth: Right.
Sarah: a little buzz on their watch for instance, or something.
Elizabeth: Exactly. And Sarah, you also pointed to something important, which is the documentation piece. And that is an entire separate discussion. know, families are sometimes very surprised to find out that whatever they've presented to the high school or, you know, if they've been at the same school forever, may not meet the requirements at college. And colleges are allowed to set their own documentation. So I have a whole post on my website about students with ADHD. because they can be identified by so many different kinds of professionals. So if they get identified by a pediatrician in a well visit, that is probably, at a lot of schools, not gonna be sufficient. And part of what you were talking about is, this is a spectrum disorder. There are students who are very impaired by it. There are students who are mildly impaired. And what our job is, is to determine who has that substantial limitation. as outlined in the law. And so if we don't have objective measures that show us the student has slow processing speed, student has slow academic fluency, verbal fluency, all of these things, then we are probably going to require that in order to provide that accommodation. And also just
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: for your listeners, test anxiety as a standalone is not considered a disability.
Liz: Sorry, yeah.
Elizabeth: Yeah, so that is something that schools accommodate. Now, if you have a student who does indeed get so anxious before a test that they are physically ill, they are sweating, they are visibly, it would think it would be worth trying to document that as best you can with teacher reports or whatever and submit that to the college and see what they say. But just to be clear, is, you know, by a lot of colleges not considered a disability.
Sarah: Well, and also kind of breaking down the difference, right? So test anxiety, that is something that can be helped through some skills work, some practice. Liz, I'm sure we
Elizabeth: I heard.
Sarah: see this all the time, right? That test anxiety to your point, somewhat normal. You know, like it's normal to have some
Elizabeth: Yeah, yeah.
Liz: Yeah.
Sarah: anxiety. And if you're completely thrown by it, the only way to have an accommodation that fully takes care of that is to not have the test, which isn't really possible. Right? So extending the test, taking time if you need it in one way might help you feel less anxious about it. But ultimately to your point, test anxiety is essentially anxiety about performing well on something. And some people talk about, let's take test anxiety a little bit, that deer in headlights thing that happens where they have anxiety and they kind of forget everything that they've learned. That freeze response happens.
Elizabeth: Hmm.
Sarah: And so then they start to worry that they won't remember anything on the test. I've worked with a lot of college students and high school students and young adults as well who have to take something like the MCAT just to say, okay, we know that that's a common response. It doesn't mean you've actually forgotten everything. It's part of your fight or flight response and how do you manage that so that you can go, you know, use that, get over the wave of anxiety and then push through. There's not an accommodation that would necessarily help with that. it's more about using some skills and having some
Elizabeth: Mmm.
Sarah: insight into ways to manage it. So, so that's an idea for instance, like, yeah, it's not helpful to remove all tests because that means you have to remove all future
Elizabeth: And it's unlike.
Sarah: conferences where you have to give a presentation for your job or all future
Elizabeth: Right.
Sarah: job interviews, or, know, like those are things that in
Elizabeth: Hmm.
Sarah: real life, you would have to manage something similar. So it's a good time to
Liz: Yeah.
Sarah: learn a skill to manage it. I don't know, Liz, what do you think?
Liz: No, I was just going to say that I think we could talk forever about, in my experience, the overly used accommodations.
Elizabeth: NNNN
Liz: There's some districts in our area that are now hiring independent consultants to evaluate existing 504s because they feel like it's so easy to get extended time, other
Elizabeth: and yeah.
Liz: commonly seen accommodations. I think it's helpful for listeners to hear that like it might be a different review process it seems, potentially more stringent
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Liz: than what it looks like at the high school level. And I find and I'm interested in what you would suggest for listeners around college students really are unprepared I think for self-advocacy around like
Elizabeth: Anyway...
Liz: what documentation would I need? Like how could I prepare?
Elizabeth: right.
Liz: What do I need to know even before I set foot on campus in terms of like accessing disability services. So what would you suggest to a student that's like, okay, maybe nervous about the transition to college, had
Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
Liz: a lot of support and accommodations kind of in place to be prepared for what things might look like? And I know it's variable upon different campuses and I
Elizabeth: Good.
Liz: know there's certain programs some students kind of apply to, knowing that they need a high level of support in the environment. But what would be your, thoughts, like a kind of a checklist or to do, and there's some stuff in your book, I think that. is a good resource as well around this.
Elizabeth: Yeah, and I just want to circle back to something that you were both saying too about, know, Sarah was talking about strategy usage, right, by students who are anxious. And you're talking to Liz about preparation. Sometimes I have a sense that in the 20 plus years I've been doing this, at the K-12 level, we've moved, you know, away from providing students with strategy instruction.
Liz: Hmm.
Elizabeth: that we're doing accommodations and that's
Liz: Yeah.
Elizabeth: great, but that maybe we're losing the focus a little bit on providing the underlying skills that they need. And that is why the shift to college can really be a shock for some because
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: some of these students, as you mentioned, Liz, are accustomed to adult support. They don't develop self-advocacy. Sometimes
Liz: Yeah.
Elizabeth: parents are in a position to make
Liz: Right.
Elizabeth: sure that Every time a student sits down, there is an adult there and that they are, you know, helping the student organize, but not doing it from a coaching point of view of asking them questions and building their competence, but rather directing them. know, accommodations that we're not doing at the college level are where somebody else provides a study guide, you know, that kind of thing. And so I want students to, you know, come to us. prepared with skills and to recognize too, and this is something that we have in the notes for this conversation too, like you don't have to be perfect at all of these academic skills to be successful at college. You just need to seize debt, get degrees. And that's something that a friend of mine who's a psychologist always talks about. you just have to be pretty good, right? You have to figure out what works for you. But the notion that, know, neurotypical students come to class every day and take the most perfect notes and get on with, you know, they're the perfect at preparing for exams. It's just not real. And so
Liz: Real, yeah.
Elizabeth: what I think happens sometimes is when a student is
Liz: you
Elizabeth: identified with a learning disability, ADHD, autism, mental health disabilities that we look at these accommodations as a way of providing like a perfect environment for them, right? And making everything frictionless. And
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: what's interesting is the language of 504 specifically says, and again, I'm paraphrasing that, know, auxiliary accommodations are basically there to provide students with equal opportunity to achieve
Liz: Right.
Elizabeth: success, but actually not to guarantee success.
Liz: Success, yeah.
Elizabeth: And so when we get a lot of adults doing things for students so that it's a perfect study guide, it's a perfect set of teacher notes, we are both preparing them and sort of to me, like creating this ideal that they're gonna have of like, it's always gonna be the greatest set of notes. And a lot of students don't have the best set of notes, but they pass classes. So.
Sarah: Right. I think that you said something that was really interesting you mentioned seized get degrees.
Elizabeth: Thank you.
Sarah: and then the other part is by the way, any, anything that rhymes, I think just, just a great fact. I'm much.
Elizabeth: That's my phrase. My friend Ellen Bratton. Yeah.
Sarah: more likely to be like, OK, that makes sense. Do you get degrees? OK. But it's a good reminder that it doesn't mean you're failing. It might be
Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: a good learning opportunity to figure out what went wrong in that class so that the next one you
Elizabeth: sure.
Sarah: can improve.
Liz: Right.
Sarah: But we also see a lot of times even students who feel like Bs are failing in certain places.
Elizabeth: Yeah, wow, yeah.
Sarah: again, that's probably a whole other episode, just that
Elizabeth: Sure.
Sarah: idea of. perfectionism or what feels like achievement, but
Elizabeth: Is he?
Sarah: we'll wait for that for another conversation.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Sarah: For the people out there who feel like, my goodness, I have some accommodations, but I'm still struggling, or the people
Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: who lost their accommodations and didn't learn those strategies, what is your kind of top 10 or top five or whatever, whatever the number, your top 10 list of strategies that you think are really helpful for any student?
Elizabeth: Well, I'm going to cheat and say the first thing is to see what supports are available on campus. So,
Liz: Yeah.
Elizabeth: you know, that that that's a no brainer, right? Because even though they don't provide learning disability specialists, schools may have academic coaches or whatever they call them.
Liz: Thank
Elizabeth: Some schools and actually often that stuff is available from somebody besides us, you know, from the tutoring center. Is there
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: tutoring? go to office hours, does the TA have a review session, like all of the things that effective students do. And that longitudinal study, one of the analyses found that 50 % of the students actually only accessed the help and support available to the general student population, not accommodations.
Liz: population.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: So that goes to show you that it's possible. So,
Liz: Right.
Elizabeth: you know, things like time management and I have on my website under free resources there's a whole section that says tools for college students. Everything I use with my college and grad students is available for free there so students who don't have access to somebody like me can access it. So there's a whole time management piece. There's a discussion of SQ3R, the reading strategy, which is not disability
Liz: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: specific but is just a way of, you know, getting through text in one go. I've got some suggestions on highlighting, you know, goal setting to try and keep yourself on track. Like this is the time every single student I spoke to last week was like, I've hit the wall, I have no motivation, So like, how do you keep yourself going? You know, and to talk to somebody, there's counseling often on campus, so if you feel like you don't belong there, If you feel like everybody's having an easier time than you are, first of all, probably not, right? But it's hard to feel that way. just, you know, so that's, did I get to five yet? All right.
Liz: I think you did get to five.
Sarah: You probably got to 47 throughout this whole entire podcast episode.
Liz: Elizabeth, I love that everything's free and there's so many things you said today, at least like when I like I'm leaving. you know, I'm a huge, I think why Sarah and I are both behavioral therapists. Like I believe in self-efficacy, like people really
Elizabeth: Yeah. Yes.
Liz: feeling like they're capable of managing whatever situation they're in by learning skills or strategies. And so I hope it, we leave this conversation with some thoughtfulness around. it's not just a cure-all, accommodations aren't gonna like cure everything.
Elizabeth: for sure. Right.
Liz: then maybe when you are, you don't get, like Sarah said, the accommodations you were hoping for, you don't just give up or fall apart that like you recognize, okay, there might be a lot of other resources available to me on campus. There are also other academic skills that maybe I didn't learn in high school that I can work on developing in a college setting. So. So great, such a great conversation and something that I think like just
Sarah: Yes, thank you.
Liz: even our clinical practice, it's something that comes up a lot for us.
Sarah: And for our listeners, we will make sure to share these free resources in the
Liz: Yeah.
Sarah: show notes. I'll probably be checking them out now, especially that time management one. So going to kind of review that one. My family thanks you in advance as someone who struggles with that all the time. Elizabeth, thank you so much for your advocacy and your support and this wonderful resource.
Elizabeth: Thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure to be here.
Liz: Yeah. Thanks.
