Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Parent authorization letter-- need a sample ASAP

Well, it will be a matter of needing to mention that when we inform them that no, she won't be living on campus. Luckily, there is a "residential" loophole for kids who live here in town, so really, it doesn't strictly REQUIRE a 504 plan line item anyway. That's as we planned it, truly; it was certainly a factor as we began looking at full-spectrum universities. Many, many of them have gone to mandating freshman on-campus residency, which is not going to work well for someone like DD who is both very much underage (will barely be 15 next August at move-in) and also has to have a secure area to prepare her own meals where her food allergens are NEVER present, given her sensitivity to some of those allergens.

We didn't want those two things to be front-and-center socially for her in the explanation of "ohhhhh-- you don't live in the dorms? How's THAT work?"






As I've said in little bits here and there-- we had several factors to consider beyond DD's basic personality/learning style (she's socially adroit, but not very autodidactic in innate style, so a smaller kind of learning environment would be best);

A. Polymath without a clear sense of what she plans to pursue. Just that she wants to explore and choose something in each of at least a couple of diverse fields. For some time, that was pre-law and ?? and now it seems to be electrical engineering and... biophysics? math? neuroscience? psychology? She needs a place that offers a wide enough variety-- and preferably has research opportunities available in a lot of areas, so "full-service" research uni, especially since she has interests both in STEM and arts/humanities. There aren't a LOT of private college options that bridge that well.

B. Cost-- this is a factor because we are paying out of pocket, and thanks to her disability's mandates, I have not been working full time for the past decade. I can start, of course-- and that pays for her tuition. But she's keenly aware of the high costs of college. In other words, she needed a place where she didn't feel TOO much pressure to choose The Major For Me within the first six weeks, and doesn't feel CRUSHING pressure to finish in just four years (or less)... this was a major strike against HMC and MIT... and it wasn't the only one, as noted above and below... okay, so this was a point in favor of in-state tuition at a public university. Which we happen to have in our backyard, so to speak.

C. Had to be local to us (at least 1-3 hr driving distance) or we were going to have to face selling our house in a down market, and BOTH of us looking for work in a new location-- probably a LONG way from where we are now. The closest of those other schools was 7 hr by car. If DD and I moved alone, that one at least was "driving distance" but the others would have meant flights. DD has a great deal of difficulty flying-- the reality is that she would not have come home while she was in college unless "home" meant we moved to where she attended.

D. Moving away from the region would mean losing: a) knowledge of safe/safe enough restaurant options, safe brands of prepared food (about 50-60% of them are local/regional in distribution). While this doesn't sound awful this really sucks socially and convenience-wise. Learning how to eat safely again in a new geographic location 3K miles away is a tall order. It takes years to get to know how to navigate that well, and it often involves knowing which little independent stores stock which brands and sizes. This also has profound social consequences, since any offers to "go to ___________ coffeeshop/cafe/restaurant" need to be carefully weighed, and if they are truly unknown, the risk is generally not worth the immediate benefit; often the answer is "No, sorry... {excuse}" (because I need to see what all is on their menu before I can even step foot in there)




E. Honors college gets around the "needs small interactive environment" as it runs headlong into "large research institution with graduate research in multiple areas." This is one of the few programs housed in STEM-- not humanities-- colleges, meaning that there are as many STEM offerings in honors as there are humanities courses, and the quality is high. Too often the honors college is run from the liberal arts/humanities side and quality suffers in the STEM honors offerings, or there are relatively few STEM majors in the honors program. Not so here. Definite point in the program's favor.

One of the other bonuses is the one that Dee Dee asked about-- dealing with the accommodations package. We may wait until we know something more about DD's possible needs re: CTD (possible EDS) but we have dealt with the disability services/compliance office on this campus over the past ten years when my DD was doing summer programs there.

We also have one of the best specialists in the country (seriously, I think he is among the top 100, and he has known my DD since she was two), and that means that to equal her care on that front, we'd need to be near Chicago, Denver, Dallas, or in the mid-Atlantic states.

Complicated answer, I know. Idiosyncratic. The academics part of things was only about 30-40% of the input stream for decision-making.



She is comfortable on this campus-- and at 15yo, that's a big deal. She knows the town itself very well, which will help her socially with her classmates from out of the area (who don't).