Colleges Offering Services for Students with Learning Disabilities
Managing learning disabilities in college represents a unique challenge – for both the students who have them and the schools that want to help. And while colleges and universities in the United States are required by law to offer certain services for students with disabilities, these services only guarantee the bare minimum regarding academic assistance and accommodations.
Fortunately, there are a few schools that have gone above and beyond that minimum threshold. These colleges provide specialized support programs for young adults who have the potential to succeed academically, but who may face cognitive obstacles like dyslexia, dysgraphia, or dyscalculia; language or auditory processing disorder; Asperger's Syndrome or autism; or related issues such as ADD/ADHD. (You can learn more about the types of learning disorders here). Students with physical disabilities or chronic medical conditions may also experience cognitive impairment and require some extra academic support to succeed.
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Top 20 Colleges Supporting Students with Learning Disabilities
Thanks to the unique opportunities available at these colleges, hardworking students can overcome many of the challenges their learning differences create and gain the skills – and degree credentials – they need to achieve their personal and professional goals.
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The 20 Best Value Colleges for Learning Disabilities Ranking Methodology
How do you pinpoint the schools with the best programs for learning disabled (LD) and special needs students? We started by searching the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) IPED database for the colleges that attract an unusually large number of students with disabilities. More specifically, we only considered schools at which more than 5% of undergraduates are formally registered with the office of disability services. From that point, one of the main factors we considered in our ranking was the actual percentage of undergraduate students at the college who have learning disabilities. In the list below, the values range from 7-100%!
However, just because a program is popular with LD individuals doesn't mean its services are necessarily successful. Therefore, we also considered each school's overall undergraduate graduation rate (a measure of success for all undergrads, not just those with unique learning needs). And to pinpoint the programs that offer the most individual attention and a supportive academic environment at every stage of learning, we looked at each college's student-to-faculty ratio. We acquired both of these statistics from the NCES' College Navigator database.
Once we had obtained a short-list of potential top programs, we researched each college individually to assess the types of services they provide for students with learning disabilities. We considered both the range of available services as well as any particularly unique resources and opportunities that benefit LD undergrads.
The result of our research was this ranking of the 20 top colleges for students with learning disabilities. While everyone – especially LD individuals – has unique academic strengths and opportunities, we believe that this list represents the overall best schools for catering to those individual needs.
Sources:
College Navigator
NCES IPEDS Data Center
