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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?

#291

Wifey works at uni. From all her stories, sounds like a strategy I'd adopt to boost my GPA, if it existed back then. Of course, there are also true cases where it takes 4 hours to complete a 30-minute test. All it does is kill the GPA signal completely. One amongst many before, pure noise now. [edit: not denying people need it. but it appears like folks that don't also use it]

Tell me about it. My best hire had a horrible GPA.

But I get it. If the job doesn't demand creativity but just following orders, GPA was a signal for it.

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

#292
post #168
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

America's diversity has not changed commensurately with the drop in trust, but economic factors have, and the charts I linked to back that correlation in other countries.

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

#293
post #244
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Come on, let's be serious. Most Stanford undergraduate courses aren't that tough, grade inflation is rampant, and almost anyone who gets admitted can probably graduate regardless of accommodations or lack thereof. We're talking about the difference between getting an A or A- here. And Stanford has such generous financial aid that students from families earning less than $150K get free tuition so no one should be leav…

> no one should be leaving with huge student debts.

"In the 2023-24 academic year, 88% of undergraduates graduated without debt, and those who borrowed graduated with a median debt of $13,723." Source: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/stanford-sets-2025...

So strictly speaking, not "no one". (But certainly smaller than the national averages.)

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

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people that are just in the line where they are very productive workers anyway Of course, that applies to everybody who achieves a stable career at all. Exceedingly few people (if anyone) are competent and capable at everything, even when you're just talking about basic skills that are handy for common, everyday work. Your doctor may be a incorrigibly terrible driver, your bus driver may pass out at the sight of bl…

Well put. > A lot of modern, aspiring-middle-class and online culture Theres also a pernicious way of identifying with the struggle. Instead of I have trouble focusing in certain situations, so maybe I should find ways to spend my time (careers, hobbies) that work well with that. We instead go to 'I have ADHD' and my 'job' should make special accommodations for me. Regardless of whether a job should or should not mak…

I don't see how you spending time in ways that work well with your challenges is different from your job providing accomodations, except that if your employer is willing to work with you then you don't have to randomly roll the dice until you come up with an employer where things happen to work in whatever way you wanted.

It's not like one of the accomodations on the table is "not doing your job"

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

#295
Why put a time limit on exams? Why not put everyone on the same playing field by allowing unlimited time to take the exam? The majority of exams at my university have no time limit (within the operating hours of the testing center), and it works well. At the end of the day, if you don't know the material, having more time isn't going to help you.

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

#297
post #156

I went to an elite school. I had undiagnosed depression and ADHD and I almost failed out. I don't think I needed more time on tests but I definitely needed medication and counseling. The counseling resources available at the time were not adequate and medication was difficult to get.

An "elite school" is not for everyone because everyone is different.

You did not need medication and counseling. What you needed was a regular public college.

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

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a point where it's not immoral to leverage systems available to you to land yourself in a better situation. That sounds loaded with a lot of value judgment. I don't think it's inappropriate for you to suggest it, but I think you'll find that a lot of people who value equitability, collaboration, communalism, modesty, earnestness, or conservation of resources might not share that perspective with you. It tur…

I live in liberal cities. Nearly every car drive and bicycle rider has the attitude "F everyone else, I'm going to break every law if I find it inconvenient to myself. Who cares if it affects others" This is not in alignment with "equitability, collaboration, communalism, modesty, earnestness, or conservation of resources" People claim those values but rarely actually follow them.

[dead]

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

#299
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The percentages of workers that are neurodivergent is much higher than usual Is it much though? 38%? I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies. > there's a big cadre or neurodivergent people that are just in the line where they are very productive workers anyway Alternatively, it just became popular to label others or oneself that way. And tech elites have nothing better to do in free time. Also…

> I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies. Were you a solo founder of 5 companies? I literally cannot fathom that you worked at 5 even very modest-sized tech companies and never experienced a colleague with some level of what we’d call neurodivergent. I can’t validate that the rate is 38%, but I find it hard to believe it’s under 5% and if it’s 5%, you’d be hard-pressed to avoid crossing paths ac…

That's unfair. Even a founder of a company wouldn't have any legal means of knowing for certain the disabled status of their employees.

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

#300

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.

I've made it a principle to live my life according to certain ideals - one of which is not to play these games/tricks. I'm doing better than fine. Have others who cheated done better than me? Sure - some have. Why should I care? I'm a high income earner and I don't need an even wealthier life. I am not at all an outlier. If you're amongst a crowd that won't value you for not cheating, it's on you to change the crowd…

Do you have children?

I do. I still subscribe to your ideals or at least mostly follow them. But for lack of playing such games, I saw my children’s opportunities slip away.

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