Video: Academic Path for 2e Students

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2Gq5T4wxbY

What you'll learn in this video:

How college admissions has shifted to view neurodivergent students in a more positive light

How to tell your student's unique academic story in college applications

The importance of building skills early — from executive functioning to active reading strategies

What a gap year really means for 2E students and how to use it effectively

How colleges implement accommodations and why retention makes them motivated to help

What documentation colleges require (psychoeducational reports, IEPs, 504 plans)

Notable colleges that support 2E students, including Landmark College, UC Santa Cruz, Colby, and the University of Iowa's Belin-Blank Center

Results: Students placed at UC schools, elite liberal arts colleges (Colby), and prestigious UK universities including St. Andrews, University of Edinburgh, and University of York.

🤝 This talk was made possible by REEL — a community dedicated to supporting twice-exceptional learners.

👉 Learn more and get involved at www.reel2e.org

📩 Questions for Rosa? Reach out at eaforped.com or rosa@sped.com

Read the transcript here

Here is the transcript broken into 4-5 sentence sections with no words changed:

Hi, my name is Rosa Varela and I am an education advocate with Educator Advocate for Special Education. We focus on 2E and 3E students. I was a teacher for 25 years. Today we're going to be talking about the academic path for 2E students and we're going to be focusing on planning for college.

So when I was a student at UCLA, I worked in programs that focused on admissions, on transition and on retention. And I had friends who also worked alongside me and they some of them stayed on at the university, some of them are still there. So we know very well about having contacts at the colleges and of building on those relationships. And that's what we do. We reach out to the colleges, we make contact and we build relationships.

Now what we have found is that over the past couple of years the way that neurodeiverse students are viewed in terms of admissions has shifted and that's good news for us because now they are viewed in a very positive light. What we do is we highlight our students high potential, their creativity, their empathy, their determination. And these are all qualities that the colleges want on their campuses. And so when we do the application, we focus on those things.

We tell the story of our our students academic journey because some of our students, you know, they do have that perfect 4.0, but honestly, most of our TUI kids do not. And their ch their journey their academic journey has been one of challenges of adversity but also of successes and of life lessons and those are the points that we want to highlight. We want to tell the colleges this is a kid who is going to be persistent is going to be successful and that is what the colleges want on their campuses.

So everything we do is focused around the idea of working to help the student achieve their highest potential. And that is something that we do from the very beginning. From the time we begin working with the family and with the student, we help to develop their skills so that they succeed in college. Whatever that means, whether it's skills in terms of academic skills, in terms of reading or in terms of possibly um executive functioning, whatever it is, we make sure that we help so that the student is going to succeed in college.

And so one question that we got was about the gap year. And the way we think of it is that we begin working on that gap year as soon as we begin working with the student because what is a gap year? A gap year is time for the asynchronous development of twoe students to catch up. And so our students catch up during that that time. They learn the skills that they don't have, whether they're academic, whether they're executive functioning, whether they're social, whatever it is, we try to provide that as soon as we begin working with the students.

So that by the time that they get ready to go to college, they have that. Um, and we do this through advocacy. We do advocate uh do advocacy for K12 uh with the IEP process. We also deep dive and research uh academic effects on um learning and we do tutoring for our students.

Um now during the tutoring what we do isn't just tutoring. We do observations of the students so that we have two minds working together. We we think we discuss how um the the AC accommodations are working, whether they're working and what are better ways to uh to work with the student so that once we know what works with that student, we can communicate that to the schools, to the teachers, and we can work together with the districts to for really for the betterment of the students education.

Um, we also research and look at AT and other accommodations. We will do the the research on AT and what once they are ready to go to college, we work with the accessibility office. We call the accessibility office. We talk to them about what the student needs and make sure that they are on board with those accommodations.

Now, um, when we did this presentation a couple days ago, we had a question about whether colleges actually implement accommodations. The answer is yes, absolutely they do. The reason for this is that once a student is admitted to college, the colleges very desperately want to retain those students. Retention is a becomes a big issue. So colleges want that to retain the student and they're going to work hard to give the student the accommodations they need so that they can retain the student.

So what what do we actually do? What is the plan? Well, we deep dive into the students exceptionalities and those except exceptionalities effects including high potential challenges and multilingualism on their education. Um so for example uh CAPD we know that CAPD is central auditory processing disorder but what does that really mean?

We do the research and we go deeper. We look at you know the effects on the brain etc. We know that CAPD often has an effect on a students ability to to learn FMIC awareness and learn phonics. But what about okay after they've learned it? So once they they've learned phonics does that mean that their CAPD is resolved?

Hopefully but not necessarily. That student may later have issues with note takingaking. And so we know these things, we research these things and we figure out how can we help these students? How can we get accommodations that will allow the students to succeed? So what we are looking for is the roadblocks that the student is facing and how to overcome them.

Um, one very very important key thing is that we need to ensure that our students do not lose their love of learning or if they sadly have lost it that we allow them to rediscover that love of learning because our kids are so bright and they have so much to offer that we need to make sure that they are still demonstrating all all of that, their knowledge, their ability and that they are loving the learning that they are doing.

So in order to do that, we focus on strengths and what we do is we encourage their passion project. That's what I like to call it. Um and we always encourage that passion project because that's what's going to bring out all of those great feelings, all of the all of the great um thinking, curiosity, all of that um in our students. And then what we do is we use those passion projects and we center our college application around it.

Um we also advocate for appropriate rigorous curriculum and accommodations. For example, we have a third grade student who's working at a fifth grade level. Yes, they absolutely need that rigorous curriculum. They need to be allowed to move forward and work at a at a level on the uh material that is appropriate for them and they also need the appropriate accommodations.

Now time is precious for our two kids and so what we do is we help them capture that time by ensuring they are learning to the best of their ability in the way that they learn best and by with the the rigorous curriculum as well.

Now, what what results have we gotten? Well, our results have been pretty exceptional. We have gotten kids into the UC schools and we are fortunate here in California that we have a wonderful higher education uh setup where, you know, our kids can go to community college, they can go to Cal States, they can go to UC's. And these UC schools are really wonderful places that some of our kids uh are going to do very well at.

We have a student who um is going to UCSC Santa Cruz and we've spoken with their accessibility office. It's a great place and the school also overall has a smaller field than a lot of the other UC's which is also important for some of our students um because some of them are looking for that smaller field. So, we've had uh acceptances at some really elite small liberal arts colleges such as Colby. And Colby is one of what is known as the Little Ivy's because it is in the same cohort as some of the Ivy schools um with the um the the students that are applying to the Ivy's are also applying to the Little Ivy's and they have an acceptance rate of about 6 to 7%.

Um what was really neat was that the student who was accepted at Colby, he received a written note from the one of the admissions officers just uh telling him how much he enjoyed his application and how much he was looking forward to having him on campus. So that was awesome. Uh we've also had acceptances to some competitive technical colleges to some Russell Group universities such as the University of York, the University of Edinburgh and um one of the ancient universities um St. Andrews is one of the ancient universities along with Oxford and Cambridge.

So to wrap it all up, so in summary, um what we're looking at here is the holistic college admissions benefit our neurodeiverse students. They benefit our 2e students and we focus on strengths and we tell the students unique educational journey. We advocate for appropriate curriculum and accommodations. We have students begin to practice and develop their skills now.

So, for example, um some of our students might have an AT accommodation such as text to speech. Well, the school might tell them, "Oh, here's a program you're going to use. You you click here. You use this button here and right here it plays it and that's it." Well, some of our students might need more than that.

They need to understand that it's not just about pressing play and listening and zoning out. No, that's not what text to speech is. With text to speech, we need to also focus on active reading even if we're just listening. So um we need to consider the students needs and what will be the best fit for them.

Um, so some of the questions we got uh during our presentation were about documentation and what documents need to be sub submitted. What we have been told is that they need an educational a psychoeducational report from the last 2 to 3 years. That's what they're looking for. Uh an assessment that has been done by a professional and the report needs to include the accommodations and also the rationale for the accommodations so that the college knows what to apply and why they are applying it, what they're looking for.

Um, I was asked about whether an ISP uh from a private school or an IP or a 504 would be sufficient. Uh, yes, the the colleges will accept that, but what they're really looking for are those um assessments, those psychoeducational assessments. Uh so some other colleges uh that I would like to briefly mention and to kind of keep in mind are Landmark which is a college on the east coast that focuses on students with disabilities with um academic disabilities. Santa Clara is a wonderful small liberal arts college here in California.

Wheaten, a great li uh small liberal arts college on the east coast and uh the University of Iowa, the Bell & Blank uh center which focuses on two students and also that uh center has a year-long bridge program. Um so a question we got was about uh taking a gap year or using a bridge program. Absolutely. Um I feel that that is very necessary because what we want to do is we want to make sure that when the student does go to college that they are ready and prepared for it.

So um using that gap year for a year-long bridge program such as that or having them take classes online or uh somehow elevate their skills. Absolutely very positive. Um, so that is my presentation and if you have any comments, any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. My website is eaforped.com or you can email me at rosa4sped.com. Thank you so much.

AI Summary

Educator Advocate for Special Education – College Planning for 2E Students

Rosa Varela, an education advocate and former 25-year teacher, presents on planning the college path for twice-exceptional (2E) and three-times-exceptional (3E) students.

Admissions Approach Rosa's organization focuses on highlighting the strengths of neurodiverse students — their creativity, empathy, determination, and high potential. Rather than hiding academic challenges, they tell the student's full story, framing their journey of adversity and resilience as an asset that colleges value.

How They Support Students They work with students from the very beginning, building academic, executive functioning, and social skills early so students are college-ready. This includes K-12 IEP advocacy, tutoring with observation-based feedback, researching assistive technology (AT), and communicating directly with college accessibility offices to ensure accommodations are in place before students arrive.

The Gap Year Philosophy They view the gap year not as a setback but as valuable time for a 2E student's asynchronous development to catch up. Bridge programs, online classes, and skill-building during this time are strongly encouraged.

Results Students have been accepted to UC schools, elite small liberal arts colleges like Colby, Russell Group universities including Edinburgh and St. Andrews, and competitive technical colleges.

Key Takeaways

• Holistic admissions processes benefit neurodiverse students

• Passion projects are central to strong college applications

• Colleges do implement accommodations because student retention matters to them

• Required documentation typically includes a psychoeducational assessment from the last 2-3 years

• Notable college resources for 2E students include Landmark College, University of Iowa's Bell & Blank Center, Santa Clara University, and Wheaton College