Testing Accommodations for ADHD/Anxiety
Just wanted to let people know my experience with accommodations process - I was sort of successful.
Applied for testing accommodations for ADHD + Anxiety, PTSD (narrowly avoided a mass casualty incident in high school so I’m not the greatest fan of not being able to get out of rooms on my own terms). Requested 1.5x time since that’s what I get through the school. I actually never got formally diagnosed with anything until med school when I was literally not passing my exams, so I was sure they wouldn’t give me anything at all. I had classmates with accommodations at school get denied as well by the NBME.
Here’s what I gave them:
A 2-page personal statement
An recent report from my ADHD neuropsych testing
A letter from the school psychiatrist
A document from the school showing my current approved accommodations
A document from the med school showing my improvement in test scores before vs after getting accommodations
Evidence of my repeated attempts for the MCAT and the SAT
NBME ended up giving me normal time but over 2 days with extended break time - meaning I take 7 blocks of 20 questions each day (no extra time) and I get up to 75 minutes of break time per testing day. Also since my permit eligibility period was about to expire right before I got a decision, they gave me a permit with new extended dates. I applied mid-January and heard back end of March.