Image Description: Two people, what seem like college students, are sitting on the lawn of a college campus. They both are drinking coffee, one person is writing down something on their notebook, and the other is looking at their computer screen. Behind them is a building of their college campus.
Since March 2020, colleges have become more competitive than ever, with acceptance rates falling drastically at some colleges. Many admissions officers had to navigate test-optional applications for the first time as well. Students across the country were unable to take SATs due to the threat of COVID-19 and were unable to visit colleges, forced to pick schools to apply to—and even to commit to—from what they saw on Zoom tours and YouTube videos.
Yet, all these articles lack one critical perspective: one of disabled students, who have dealt with this inaccessibility years before COVID began and will continue to deal with it years after COVID is no longer a focus in our daily lives.
For disabled students, the inaccessibility of the college application process begins when we are building our college list.
Lex Gilbert, an incoming college freshman (who uses she/they pronouns), strongly considered what accommodations schools offered when creating their list. However, colleges still fell short in providing the information she needed to know—like Vanderbilt, one of the colleges they had fallen in love with—who never emailed them back when asked about what accommodations they would be able to provide.
Vixa, a current student at Sweet Briar weighed her options a bit differently and considered the experiences of disabled students within her decision-making. “I ended up turning down a college offering me 13k because there was ableism on campus regularly. I avoided my state schools (University of Delaware, Delaware Technical Community College, Delaware State University) because I had spoken to disabled students who faced ableism from both staff and students on campus, and also a few whose IEPs were thrown out because they ‘really weren’t autistic.’”Despite the financial hardship out-of-state options often pose on students, she was forced to look elsewhere, even though she was most comfortable living near home.
Once a college list is finalized, it’s time to develop a personal statement and write supplemental college essays. Choosing whether to discuss your disability within your essays is a complicated personal choice. For many, including myself, the exploitation of the trauma often interlinked with disability (medical trauma, ableism, doubt or disbelief from family and friends, etc.), is too much to bear but feels necessary. The entirety of my personal statement was about learning to accept my identity as disabled after my life switching suddenly at fourteen when I began to experience health problems and fought for a diagnosis for months. Recounting this traumatic time of my life made me feel vulnerable, almost too vulnerable, but I thought it was necessary to disclose the most prominent struggle of my life.
After all, college application culture constantly emphasized that sharing the most personal details of your life would need to happen for you to be accepted to any of your dream colleges. For others, they’ve been told to avoid the topic of disability in fear of ableist admission officers denying them based on needing accommodations or support to thrive in college.
Sarah Fahmi, an incoming freshman at an Ivy League school, emphasized that she was also told that disability was a taboo topic that should stay hidden under the surface until you were accepted, despite its importance in her identity and life.
“During the college admissions process, I think I was definitely scared of mentioning my disability at all. While applying, you can’t really know whether someone would discriminate against you as an applicant because of your disability and I was often told and read online that colleges try as hard as they can not to admit disabled students who need accommodations. For fear of being discriminated against because of that, I avoided speaking about my disability even though it’s a major part of my life,” Fahmi said.
Finally, you’ve been accepted to college, and now it’s time to select which college is perfect for you. If you’re physically disabled, you may not be able to travel to college campuses due to their inaccessibility—like Boston College’s replacement of wheelchair ramps and other accessible routes with stairs. Until now, most colleges have not had sufficient virtual resources for one to learn about schools, complicating matters even more for folks who cannot travel to campus for one reason or another. With COVID-19 cases lowering and college campuses opening back up, visiting college campuses won’t be easier for disabled folks— in fact, it might even cause more fear for immunocompromised folks who see the world returning to normal while they’re still in danger.
Once you decide which school is the perfect fit for you, it’s time to request your accommodations. Accommodations seem easy in concept, a route towards figuring out what supports would best help you, but it can be complicated in reality. Most colleges require excessive documentation from doctors, therapists, and other medical professionals, which can be a steep barrier for students who come from low-income or rural areas and may not have easy access to a doctor.
Fahmi, who was diagnosed with Diabetes as a child, also noticed the inaccessibility of the accommodations process. “It’s been kind of hard getting accommodations. A lot of the information and forms that you have to fill out have been buried deep in my college’s website, and there’s no guidance whatsoever. I’m struggling to know exactly what I need to put down and what my doctor should be filling out… Even when I met with someone from the disability services center, they were very vague about what I needed to do,” she said.
We also observed Antonio Milane, an incoming student at Stanford, make waves across the internet after Stanford denied him his accommodations, saying they couldn’t be promised as they were personal services. The Stanford community rose for him with over 65,000 signatures on his petition. Still, it fell short, claiming it as a victory of the Stanford class of 2025 rather than viewing it as a microcosm of the dangerous culture of ableism surrounding every single school, even Ivy Leagues.
The pandemic did make college applications inaccessible for students across the globe this year, but it also reflected the normal state of college applications for disabled youth – an inaccessible terrain filled with ableism and barriers. This year’s college admission process wasn’t new to students who have struggled within the education system their entire life, and who didn’t expect there to be a change within the transition to college.
Disabled activists like Antonio Milane and UChicago’s student organization Students for Disability Justice have made strides in curbing ableism within their respective colleges. However, ableism remains a continuous threat to disabled students’ right to higher education. It must be solved internally within college administrations, not by forcing students to become activists to make sure they can attend college alongside their non-disabled peers who they worked just as hard as, if not harder.
