This book is full of blatant lies! It insists disability accomodations are only available at certain campuses--when the Americans with Disabilities Act requires them made available at ALL non-religious colleges and universities throughout America. Don't limit your opportunities and potential because the author/publisher of this guide is illiterate!
As a person with a learning disability, who HAS successfully completed her college degrees, I honestly vouch that self-advocacy IS required at any ADA-covered college you are accepted to and enroll at.
In addition to falsely implying that people with disabilities can only enroll at a limited number of campuses, these guides also 'forget' that students are legally required to self-advocate for their accomodations at any college campus which they are ultimately accepted to and then enroll at. No campus, unlike K-12 special education,just gives accomodations to you!
It has nothing to do with intended major or extra curricular hobbies. The self-advocacy is what ultimately allows us to receive the same accommodations which we need to successfully complete class assignments and then graduate. The advocacy also provides us with the accomodations (where also required) for on-campus living/student life...etc.
College students MUST understand that their campus is legally covered by a different set of disability laws than had existed in the k-12 environment. Now, ANY college campus only has to provide 'reasonable accommodation' to a student with disabilities. It is not under any circumstances obligated to retain every one of us wanting to earn a degree no matter how 'nice' or `hard-working' we are. We must instead prove that we can do the `regular' work at a `regular' speed' compared against people without disabilities.
Nor is it required to deal with the concerns of our parents, irrespective of how concerned they are that we be able to complete that desired degree.
If they haven't already, the last years of high school are a prime opportunity for a person with disabilities to develop our own self advocacy skills, especially in exercise at our own annual IEP meetings. We need to be the ones ourselves who are meeting with college officials. If we do not advocate for accommodations, nobody else legally can at the college environment.
College administrators simply do not have to meet with--let alone listen to parents/guardians--even while taking the tuition money!
Instead of these books, I strongly recommend "Self-Advocacy Skills for Students With Learning Disabilities: Making It Happen in College and Beyond". Henry B. Reiff explains in depth the points which I have briefly covered above, instead advocating that colleges are picked based on the institutions nationally-recognized academic credentials and your degree focus/intended degree focus so that college education will actually be worth something when you do graduate.
Wanting people with disabilities ourselves knowing how to properly perform the college application and enrollment processes which will be expected, his book provides a much more realistic perspective to college application than this so-called guide and similar con-jobs.
