​Colorado State offers comprehensive support services through OPS, Opportunities for Post Secondary Success. OPS costs $3000 per semester, but it can be funded by the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation. OPS works to implement compensatory strategies to help students with learning differences succeed. The transition to college and the transition to employment following college are two areas of focus. According to Julie Kothe, the Director of OPS, self-advocacy is the key to post secondary success, and the program works closely with students to develop this skill. Every aspect of a student's college experience is considered and addressed, for example, OPS offers an early move-in program to help students with learning differences adjust. Students meet with their advisors at OPS twice a week for about an hour or an hour and a half. OPS offers a social skills curriculum and works to develop study skills. This is a wonderful and well-established program, a great asset at one of my favorite universities!

Study: Early Classes Connected to Poor Academic Performance
Safia Abdulahi
February 22, 2023
​A new study found that early-morning classes are associated with “lower attendance, shorter sleep, and poorer academic achievement” among college students.
The study, published Monday in Nature Human Behavior, analyzed university students’ digital traces. Wi-Fi connection logs of 23,391 students revealed that class attendance was about 10 percentage points lower for classes at 8 a.m. compared with later start times, according to the study.
The study also analyzed the grades of 33,818 students and the number of days per week that a student had morning classes and found that morning classes negatively correlated with their grade point average.
“Growing evidence indicates that early class start times can be detrimental for students’ sleep and daytime functioning,” the study says.
A similar study published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that every additional hour of average nightly sleep early in the semester is associated with an 0.07-point increase in end-of-term grade point average.

I like to think of admissions as a 100 point process. 70-80% of those points will come from a student's GPA. Next comes rigor, is the student challenging themselves in the context of what is available at the high school? Is the student finding avenues of enrichment outside of high school? Selective colleges want students who proactively seek knowledge and experiences, not students who wait for things to be assigned. There is no one thing that gets a student into college, it is the entirety of the student's record during the four years of high school that determines admission. When a parent claims, as was recently reported to me, that attending Berkeley's ADTP got his son into Cal Poly, there is a nugget of truth to the claim. ADTP classes can be reported on the Cal State application, so an A in a class does help the overall GPA. Did this one class outweigh the other elements in the application? No. Another piece of anecdotal information frequently passed on is the student who got into Stanford with a 3.9 and nothing special about them. DOESN'T HAPPEN: YOU JUST DON'T KNOW THE FULL STORY. Also,D3 schools do not give athletic scholarships, so please don't tell me that your daughter just got one. 
There actually is some fairness to admissions, and I find solace in that fact. Students who do their best are admitted to colleges where they can thrive and succeed. That may be Boise State or it may be Harvard. I've met successful adults from both schools, and some not so-successful ones as well. It's not where you go, it's what you do with it.