The school psychologist at my university has recently diagnosed me with ADHD. However, I’ve already graduated with a bad GPA. My passion is law, and I’m applying to law school after I take the LSAT in October. I looked into getting special treatment for the LSAT because it’s super hard for me not to reread every question three or four times. They said that we need a diagnosis from childhood.
I’m bilingual and an immigrant; and as I was growing up, I was the quiet type that would day dream. No one picked up on my ADHD, and I always denied it because I thought I was the same as everyone else. Now I realize that with a little help I could have been a straight A student, and I’m scared it’s too late. Is there anything I can do to convince the LSAT administrators to give me some extra time?
Your story is very heartbreaking. You have persevered and struggled to succeed while coping with your disability in silence. The absence of earlier formal diagnosis and accommodation will make it much harder to obtain recognition as a person with a disability and obtain accommodations now.
However, the more that you and your current clinicians can both provide robust evidence of the current accuracy of the diagnosis and impact of the disability and go back through your life history to find evidence of its manifestations while you were growing up, as well as informal strategies or supports that you or others developed to help you to function, the more chance there will be to support your need for accommodations. In particular, you should have your evaluator pay special attention to your testing behavior, to how you function with timed tests, with tests that require quick response time, and in tests that measure attention and processing. It will be an uphill effort but isn’t without the possibility of success.