Psychological Assessment for Academic Accomodations

If you are seeking academic accommodations for an upcoming semester or standardized exam (whether for yourself or your child), we strongly recommend that you do not wait until the last minute. So often, we get calls from potential clients looking for accommodations only to tell us that their deadline for documentation submission is only two weeks away. Unfortunately, this is not enough time to accomplish everything that needs to be done.

A full psychological or psychoeducational assessment can take about up to a month and sometimes more. It‘s a thorough process because these schools and standardized exam boards don’t want to give accommodations out to just anybody. They want full evidence that you really meet criteria, and that can’t be proven in just a one hour appointment. These evaluations typically involve up to a two hour interview with you, an average of two interviews with others that can attest to your challenges (such as a parent, loved one, teacher, therapist, or coach), completion of various questionnaires, and possibly physical in-office testing that can last three hours or more. Then, the psychologist still has to put all this data together to write up a thorough report explaining their findings and advocating for your accommodation needs. This is clearly not something that can be taken care of in just one day or a matter of a few hours. On top of that, calling for an assessment appointment does not guarantee that you will secure one that same week or even the next. Just like at any doctor’s office, you may have to wait for an appointment. For psychoeducational testing specifically, there may even be a waiting list, considering how much work the psychologist is putting into these evaluations.

So, the answer here on when to seek a psychological assessment is simply, as soon as you feel you may need accommodations. This might be after having a very challenging semester or school year, or as soon as you know for sure that you’ll be taking a big standardized examination in the future. Why wait any longer than that? If you meet diagnostic criteria that will afford you accommodations, it’s better to know sooner than later and get this testing process out of the way. The last thing anyone wants is to experience the last minute stress of trying to get this process completed just before the deadline at the same time of trying to mentally prepare for a full school year or the biggest exam of your life.

If any of this applies to you, start making your calls to local psychologists now. At Strengths and Solutions, we test for ADHD, learning disorders, giftedness, anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders that qualify for accommodations in school and standardized exams. Book a complimentary consultation to learn more about our accommodations evaluation service for adults, college students, and more.

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