What do Grads do AFTER all the accommodations?

[Anonymous]

So there's this cohort we've discussed at length that have had testing, homework, classwork, and so many other accommodations. Clearly we've discussed whether they are legitimate or not, and it sounds like certainly the case for many, but the volume at top universities beggars belief.

Are the accommodated somehow able to hack it in working worlds? Do they up their game? Do they take what look like serious credentials down the working ladder to somewhere less prestigious/rat-race-like? Did they never really need accommodations and were just trying to maximize results, to "play the game" and beat their peers who don't seek extra time, etc.?

I just get curious about the endgame, after graduation.

[Anonymous]

I have also wondered this. It is a form of DEI that doesn’t exist in the real world.

[Anonymous]

If you’re a functional person who has fake accommodations because in 2026 the world demands perfect scores and perfect grades coming out of school, but without those accommodations you’d be a 1980-era 3.5/1450, then you’re a smart person who is willing and able to play the game, so I’d expect you to do well in a work environment.

[Anonymous]

Can you imagine having a pilot who has all the skills on paper but needs 50% more time to make the same decisions as regular pilots? Or a surgeon who can accurately and correctly perform a procedure but has to keep you cut open for 90 minutes instead of 60 minutes?

[Anonymous]

^ evil

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you’re a functional person who has fake accommodations because in 2026 the world demands perfect scores and perfect grades coming out of school, but without those accommodations you’d be a 1980-era 3.5/1450, then you’re a smart person who is willing and able to play the game, so I’d expect you to do well in a work environment.

Agreed. They do just fine because they didn't need them to be functional. They put them in place to game the system and be perfect. So in the end they enter the workforce just like everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you’re a functional person who has fake accommodations because in 2026 the world demands perfect scores and perfect grades coming out of school, but without those accommodations you’d be a 1980-era 3.5/1450, then you’re a smart person who is willing and able to play the game, so I’d expect you to do well in a work environment.

Agreed. They do just fine because they didn't need them to be functional. They put them in place to game the system and be perfect. So in the end they enter the workforce just like everyone else.

Agree with both of these.

It's the flip side of the 40+ successful adult who suddenly claims to be disabled due to a late in life ADHD diagnosis, and then when you express surprise that someone who got straight As all the way through school, attended a top law school, and worked at a high level firm for years, was somehow secretly impaired, they explain that they were just "masking."

We've completely upended the definition of what it means to be disabled or limited, in order to allow privileged people to claim special status. The comparison to DEI is apt because they are related -- this is how privileged people responded to DEI. They accepted DEI as the correct course, and then found a way to assign themselves protected status. Neat trick!

[Anonymous]

I feel like this is such an uninformed question. It’s like asking how anyone who is not thin, tall, lithe, and graceful can possibly succeed in life when they clearly won’t be successful as a ballet dancer. Perhaps if we just starved teens who aren’t thin enough, or made them have height stretching surgery?

There are people who are really good at thinking fast and reacting quickly, and those people may pursue careers that use those skills. Other people will choose careers that fit the skills that they have. Maybe some people will choose wrong initially and have to pivot. That’s how life goes.

[Anonymous]

What concerns me more are the ones who really needed them but are never told they really are not suited to be pilots or air traffic controllers or other things where fast processing is necessary for safety of others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What concerns me more are the ones who really needed them but are never told they really are not suited to be pilots or air traffic controllers or other things where fast processing is necessary for safety of others.

Luckily there are job requirements that prevent any of us from waltzing in and taking over the controls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can you imagine having a pilot who has all the skills on paper but needs 50% more time to make the same decisions as regular pilots? Or a surgeon who can accurately and correctly perform a procedure but has to keep you cut open for 90 minutes instead of 60 minutes?

The vast majority of jobs are not pilots or surgeons. There are tons and tons of workers skating by in lots of places every single day. We all know them. Some of them get by on EQ and manage to impress without ever having to really do anything. Some of them crash and burn, get fired, and move into something else until they hopefully find a job that suits the way their brain works.

[Anonymous]

From direct experience in advising pre-med college students with extensive accommodations, they burn out and cannot handle the pace of classes well enough to keep the necessary 3.7+ at places like UVA, William and Mary, Emory, WashU, Vanderbilt to name a the more common and or recent ones. Our group has never had one with extensive accommodations who got in to an ivy-level but surely they exist among the hooked admits.

I’m not talking about needed accommodations for specific processing/dyslexia combined with top-3% intelligence. Those students tend to do well because they learned how to manage before middle school. I mean the double time or unlimited time for anxiety and/or adhd typically an accommodation added in middle or high school. Many on paper have an SAT that is above 1450/33 and seemingly they should be able to handle those schools. A 1450/33 with double or unlimited time as well as As in high school that came with multiple accommodations, bluntly, does not correlate with good grades. Keep in mind 3.7 is around average at all of those schools.
I cannot speak to other career paths with less test-centered/curve dependent college grading

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel like this is such an uninformed question. It’s like asking how anyone who is not thin, tall, lithe, and graceful can possibly succeed in life when they clearly won’t be successful as a ballet dancer. Perhaps if we just starved teens who aren’t thin enough, or made them have height stretching surgery?

There are people who are really good at thinking fast and reacting quickly, and those people may pursue careers that use those skills. Other people will choose careers that fit the skills that they have. Maybe some people will choose wrong initially and have to pivot. That’s how life goes.

+1 People with ADHD, for example, can do well when they focus on their strengths. For my DH that was software engineering. He can can apply his hyperfocus tendency to that all day long. However, he has no aptitude for management so that did limit his advancement.

But also, I'd assume most of the "elite college" students who are "disabled" are not actually challenged by any learning disability but just got someone to sign off on it so they could get extra SAT time. My kids both have ADHD and found school difficult because of it. Even with accommodations, EF coaching, and medication, school pushed them to the limits of their EF capabilities. And plenty of kids have more challenging ADHD than they do. One has graduated and is doing great in a FT job that plays to his strengths. The other has done well in summer jobs in the field that is her passion. Neither of them do jobs that replicate the juggle of school where you have 5-7 different bosses, all with different expectations, schedules, deliverables, etc.

[Anonymous]

You are all people who simply do not understand what ADHD is. Get over it. Quit complaining about other people's needs and get on with your own lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What concerns me more are the ones who really needed them but are never told they really are not suited to be pilots or air traffic controllers or other things where fast processing is necessary for safety of others.

Are there not many tests that need to be passed before entering these specific professions? I know of a young man that spent months trying to become and ATC and it didn’t work out for whatever reason, so he got a job teaching at a private school.