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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?

#471

Post by bhelkey »

powerclue wrote: post #216

That doesn't seem outrageously high for a high cap school? 15-20% of the world is estimated to have a disability. So Stanford population is high, but approximately double the average of a random global population sample. Now, think about the selection pressures Stanford applies. Stanford selects students who are fighting for top academic honors. Those students are dealing with brutal competition, and likely see their…

> 15-20% of the world is estimated to have a disability. So Stanford population is high, but approximately double the average of a random global population sample.

Stanford is not a random sample of the global population. Most notably, Stanford undergraduates are young, primarily between 18-24[1]. 8.7% of people in the US from ages 18-29 have a disability [2].

[1] https://www.meetyourclass.com/stanford/student-population

[2] https://askearn.org/page/statistics-on-disability#:~:text=8....

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

#472

Post by vasilipupkin »

Aurornis wrote: post #459
vasilipupkin wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, the original article is a flat out bullshit lie https://oae.stanford.edu/students/dispelling-myths-about-oae it's 25% registered, not 38%. How do you get this number wrong when Stanford has it on their website? how does that even happen? this number includes literally every type of possible accommodation. A shitty carpet in your room is included, an accommodation for a peanut allergy is included. This is a 90 pl…

Your link doesn't say "25%". It's also not an official, up-to-date statistics resource. It's website copy for the office of accessible education The "1 in 4" number has been there as far back as Wayback Machine has that paged archived (2023): http://web.archive.org/web/20230628165315/https://oae.stanfo... So it's definitely not a precise statistic, and it's likely out of date.

1 in 4 is 25%

it's on their website. Along with all the other details. where is 38% coming from that is a better source than Stanford's own website. At a minumum the article should have said where they got that number and why it disagrees with Stanford's own number.

And again, it includes every possible kind of accommodation under the sun. Which is totally fine and not an issue of any kind.

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

#473

Post by jbullock35 »

bawolff wrote: post #434
Aurornis wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original article which is linked in this post goes into much better detail: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/elite-universit... Schools and universities have made accommodations a priority for decades. It started with good intentions, but parents and students alike have noticed that it's both a) easy to qualify for a disability and b) provides significant academic advantages if you do. Another big acc…

> Another big accommodation request is extra time on tests. Maybe the real problem is we are testing people on how fast they can do something not if they can do something. In general, being good at academics require you to think carefully not quickly. I suspect there is a correlation between people who think things through and people who do well in school.

> In general, being good at academics require you to think carefully not quickly.

Yes, but to go even further: timed tests often test, in part, your ability to handwrite quickly rather than slowly. There is great variation in handwriting speed — I saw it as a student and as a professor — and in classrooms, we should no more be testing students for handwriting speed than we should be testing them on athletic ability.

In general, timed tests that involve a lot of handwriting are appalling. We use them because they make classroom management easier, not because they are justifiable pedagogy.

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

#474

Post by [deleted] »

lisbbb wrote: post #448

My wife has a cousin who basically gamed the system for undergraduate and law school. She grew up white, middle class, but her dad, being of Mexican descent (US born) allowed her to play up the Hispanic angle on college applications, landing her scholarships and better admissions. Then, for law school, she claimed she had ADHD so that she could get extra time on tests. It was all a scam.

[deleted]

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

#476

Post by TuringNYC »

IAmBroom wrote: post #317
TuringNYC wrote: post #257

I had neither healthcare coverage in high school nor expensive college consultants. When I got to college (Cornell) all my friends told me they had plenty of extra time on the standardized exam (the SAT) by virtue of doctors letters declaring conditions requiring accommodations. I'm sure some of these were legitimate. But practically everyone I spoke to supposedly had ADHD and resulting accommodations on the SAT. I'm…

You've made a much larger claim (80-90%) than the article. That is interesting. And anedata, unless you have solid evidence of your opinion.

>> You've made a much larger claim (80-90%) than the article. That is interesting. And anedata, unless you have solid evidence of your opinion.

Firstly No evidence provided and none needed as an unscientific anecdata supporting my personal shock.

- Many of these accomodations for SATs are done in high school and then it isnt required anymore, so naturally people dont ask once they have already gotten into college. The SAT used to be a singular choke point for top schools, and becomes irrelevant immediately after.

- I was speaking about SAT and the article was talking about accomodations needed for college housing and other things

1. I provided an anecdote based on friends' personal statements, not statistics based on school, you should trust the school's stats, but i'd really like to see the stats from The College Board on SAT scores, with a WHERE clause on only scores/accomodations for students going to top schools

2. I provided an anecdote that may well be wildly inaccurate being n=1

3. I entered to college in 1996, we're 29yrs off from my experience and the article

4. As I said above, accomodations in college != accomodations for SAT

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

#477

Post by loeg »

Sparkle-san wrote: post #427
dctoedt wrote: post #100

I'm mostly a law professor these days. When final-exam time rolls around (as in, this week), I raise my eyebrows when I'm sent the list of students who get 50% extra time. I wouldn't presume to judge the propriety of any given student's accommodation. But many of the accommodated students seem to have done just fine in class discussions during the semester. FTA: "Unnecessary accommodations are a two-front form of che…

I don't see how getting 50% extra time on exams is anything remotely close to cheating. Almost nothing I do in my day to day job comes close to being as time-boxed or arbitrarily restrictive as exams were in college.

Why don't all students get the extra time, then?

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

#479

Post by OhMeadhbh »

Dude lost me at the first sentence: "The students at America's elite universities are supposed to be the smartest, most promising young people in the country."

Very clearly the author has never visited Stanford or UCB.

Which is to say, "elite" universities do not base admissions solely on what I assume they mean when they say "smartest."

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

#480

Post by asadotzler »

ThinkingGuy wrote: post #337
eszed wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol! I did that (sometimes) when I was in hospital in the UK. If you requested a halal meal they sourced it from a takeaway down the street, which was excellent, and a wonderful break from the usual dismal fare. I wasn't a dick about it, and would ask the meal order folks if it was OK to request one that day; sometimes they said 'yes', and sometimes not (based on what, I don't know), but they knew what was up, and di…

Supposedly this "trick" works on airline flights, too.

You don't have to claim to be Jewish. You can simply request the Kosher meal and if they have enough supply, you get it.
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