Preparing Students with Disabilities for Successful College Transition
What You Need To Know About the Laws, Accommodations, Support Levels, Documentation, and the Admissions Process
Do You Really Know What Students with Disabilities Can Expect in College?
You’ve found a lot of information online.
What I can tell you is that much of it is missing nuance or is flatly wrong.
Here are some examples:
Myth: IEPs or 504 Plans “travel” (or “transfer”) to college.
Myth: Colleges must provide the same accommodations students received in high school.
Myth: Students with learning disabilities must have testing that was completed within the last three years in order to be approved for accommodations at college.
Fact: Neither kind of plan is valid after high school graduation.
Fact: Colleges make their own decisions about accommodations; they’re not bound by what students previously received.
Fact: While this is true at some colleges, many colleges accept older documentation. Students have to check the requirements at the college they’ll attend.
Get the facts from Elizabeth C. Hamblet, the college transition expert
Hamblet has spent over 25 years working in college disability services offices – not advising from the outside, but working within the system. She’s the one reviewing students’ documentation, checking that it meets the university’s requirements and supports each student’s requests as she recommends what accommodations should be approved.
Hamblet stays active in her professional community. She reads the research to stay current with policies and practices nationwide. She knows how the system works and where families often get caught off guard. Her work helps them tackle feelings of overwhelm and navigates them to a place of understanding and efficacy.
What You Do Now Matters:
Setting Up Your Student for College Success
- You’ve advocated tirelessly to get your student assessed and identified and you make sure they get certain supports.
- You keep in close contact with the school.
- You provide a lot of support at home.
But the college environment is different. Your student will need to advocate for themselves. They’ll need to self-manage and take responsibility for parts of the college disability accommodations process. You can’t do it for them.
If you don’t start factoring in these changes into the transition planning you’re doing now, you’re losing precious time to prepare your student for a smooth and successful college transition. Watch now so you can make productive use of your student’s remaining time in high school.
What You’ll Learn in the Course
- Whether all colleges have to provide disability accommodations
- Crucial information about college disability services offices and availability of accommodations at colleges across the country
- Categories of accommodations colleges don’t have to provide
- What happens if students wait to request accommodations at college
- What disability-related information will be on admissions-related documents (or not)
- The three levels of support available for students with disabilities and how to decide which one students need
Course Webinar
$14.95
What’s included?
- 1 hour video on preparing students for successful college transition
- Handouts from the video to download
Watch a brief video sample
What else you’ll learn
What laws are in place at the college level and what they mean for what college do (and don’t) have to do for students.
How students get access to accommodations at college and what they have to do throughout their education
What documentation is commonly required when students request accommodations
What part disability plays (or doesn’t) in the admissions process
What items should be in their “transition packet”
Elizabeth Hamblet
Elizabeth C. Hamblet has worked both ends of the college transition. She began her career as a high school special education teacher and then began working at the college level in the late 1990s. She is now at her third university, where she helps students with time management, organization, reading, and study skills.
In 2008, Hamblet began offering programs to families and professionals on transition to college for students with disabilities, speaking locally and at national conferences. In addition to being a requested presenter, she is also a contributing writer for Disability Compliance for Higher Education, a journal for higher education disability professionals. Her work has also appeared in the Journal of College Admission, Teaching Exceptional Children, ADDitude Magazine, Attention, Raising Teens, and Career Development for Exceptional Individuals, and on platforms like Understood.org and ADDitudemag.com.
Hamblet is the author of From High School to College: Steps to Success for Students with Disabilities, published by the Council for Exceptional Children, and a laminated guide on college transition, available from National Professional Resources. The newest edition of her book will be out mid-2022.
