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Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

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Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#161

Post by dantheman »

MangoToupe wrote: post #109
hibikir wrote: post #58

I think there's a non-malicious explanation for a percentage of this. As I grew up in the 80s, there were two kinds of gifted kids in school: The kind that would ace everything anyway, and the kind that, for a variety of reasons, lacked the regulation abilities to manage the school setting well, with the slow classes and such. A lot of very smart people just failed academically, because the system didn't work for the…

> I think there's a non-malicious explanation for a percentage of this. What on earth is a "malicious" explanation of this?

Getting a diagnosis to get more time to complete tests. https://accommodations.collegeboard.org/how-accommodations-w...

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#162

Post by thewebguyd »

quantified wrote: post #99
skzjxhz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Cultures that dislike diversity are pretty low-trust. Russia, North Korea, Iran come to mind. White American conservatives don't trust anyone who isn't also them. And so on.

There are also cultures that aren't very diverse that are pretty high-trust: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Japan, even China.

Which goes to say, diversity likely has very little to do with whether a society is low-trust or high-trust. It's more about politics and policy.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#163

Post by nxor »

rendang wrote: post #150
quantified wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cultures that dislike diversity are pretty low-trust. Russia, North Korea, Iran come to mind. White American conservatives don't trust anyone who isn't also them. And so on.

I think the user you replied to is referring to things like the Putnam findings on the effects of diversity https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FvFN8ACY6taivkcbzDGgYy1-EPb...

Also relevant: https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/05/08/americans-trust-in-on...

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#164

Post by [deleted] »

oefrha wrote: post #61

> "It's just not. It's rich kids getting extra time on tests." Talented students get to college, start struggling, and run for a diagnosis to avoid bad grades. Okay, I was an undergrad at Stanford a decade ago, I graduated with two majors (math, physics) and almost another minor (CS) so I took more credits than most and sat in more tests than most, and I don’t think I’ve seen a single person given extra time on tests…

[deleted]

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#165

Post by smcg »

Rebuff5007 wrote: post #60
OGEnthusiast wrote: post #25

American society is at the point where if you don't play these sort of games/tricks, you'll get out-competed by those who do. Bleak.

Thats true, but I think the blame is more on "American society" and not the kids working through the system. 50 years ago, college was cheaper. From what I understand getting jobs if you had a college degree was much easier. Social media didn't exist and people weren't connected to a universe of commentary 24/7. Kids are dealing with all this stuff, and if requesting a "disability accommodation" is helping them throu…

Failing out of college can be life-ruining. Tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of high-interest non-dischargeable debt and employment opportunities completely nuked.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#166

Post by apical_dendrite »

Detrytus wrote: post #141
apical_dendrite wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you from personal experience as a person with a physical disability that it's still very much a stigma. It's also very much possible for something to be both a stigma and an identity. In fact, the stigmatization can make the identity stronger.

Well, some kinds of disability still are a stigma, but here on HN neurodiversity/autism is celebrated as some kind of superpower, basically.

I'm aware. See for instance, VC Arielle Zuckerberg's comment that when deciding which founders to fund she looks for "a little of the rizz and a little of the tis" with "rizz" referring to charisma and "tis" to autism.

One could argue that mythologizing a particular characteristic is itself a form of stigma.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#167

Post by recursive »

rovr138 wrote: post #48
almosthere wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad at 50 got a disabled parking placard. He did have knee surgery, but he really didn't struggle with it about 4 months after his surgery. I asked him why he still had it - I got the impression that at this point he wanted his priority parking spot anyway. Didn't like driving around with him much after that.

[flagged]

I once lived with a guy who had a valid disabled parking placard. But he didn't like to use it because he didn't feel like he really needed it. Once the apartment manager basically begged him to use it because parking was scarce in the complex and the disabled parking was under-utilized.

I don't think the dad necessarily sucks here. The dad didn't make up the system.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#168

Post by nxor »

esafak wrote: post #139
skzjxhz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

American society is high trust and diverse. Lots of interesting charts here: https://ourworldindata.org/trust

Look here: https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/05/08/americans-trust-in-on...

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#169

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo »

oefrha wrote: post #105
OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So where were these people during my time? Testing accomodations are generally done at a separate time. So students with an accomodation requiring a low distraction environment or extra test time would all take their test after the main test takers. This came with the dual advantage of providing an alternate time for students who had excused absences to take the test as well. TLDR: You don't normally see the studen…

Most of my courses beyond freshman year were 10-20 people where I basically know everyone (unless they never come to class), so I would know if they weren’t showing up at exams. I’m pretty sure if these people were evenly distributed I would notice every exam for every class missing 1-2 people. So this is not it.

It really depends on the environment tbh. I know just for the "low distraction environment" accomodations, those normally aren't used for small classes but they are used for the big exams where they stuff the entire freshman class in the program into a series of auditoriums.

And of course some professors do double time accommodations by having the students take the test with everyone else and then follow the teacher to their office to finish the exam afterwards but tbh I didn't see that very often.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#170

Post by dyauspitr »

jph00 wrote: post #147

Amongst groups for extremely gifted kids I’ve seen, well over half are neurodivergent. It’s a well understood issue in gifted kids psychology. When these kids are accommodated appropriately they ace their classes, and when not, they fail out entirely, even at the most basic levels of education. So the statistics mentioned in the article are not necessarily inconsistent with what we’d expect, since Stanford is a highl…

What is neurodivergent though? If it’s a third of people, you can probably deem that normal.
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