In the fight for an inclusive and diverse campus, neurodiversity tends to be overlooked. Many students might never realize that some of their peers are neurodivergent or that they themselves are neurodivergent without knowing. Neurodiverse students at Harvard have often been at a disadvantage because the institution focuses on neurotypical needs. A number of students’ experiences have led them to advocate for change on Harvard’s campus to improve the institutional frameworks for helping neurodiverse students navigate a neurotypical environment.
Being neurodivergent in a neurotypical space easily exacerbates neurodiverse symptoms like social withdrawal and sensory issues, sometimes even bringing up behavioural patterns that expose underlying neurodiverse conditions. For example, Kristin King ’24 was diagnosed with ADHD during high school and with autism during their freshman year. In an interview with the HPR, they said that living on Harvard’s campus helped them realize they are neurodivergent. For them, Harvard became an “overwhelming environment” with “no way to be fully alone or have any space that is your own,” exacerbating their autism symptoms and experiences.
A neurodiversity diagnosis can be helpful for students to understand their own needs, but it can also affect how they are perceived when they disclose it. Nina Skov Jensen ’25, a vocal autistic advocate from Denmark, received her autism and ADHD diagnoses when she was eight years old. Despite being public about her disability, she had concerns about disclosing her condition when applying to college. In an interview with the HPR, Skov Jensen said that while many people have been “super accepting,” she is still “quite uncomfortable being open about it because people will make assumptions that aren’t true at all.” She said, “disability labels have an ugly tendency to be quite defining, and to be frank, when it comes to dating, being disabled isn’t exactly seen as sexy.”
For some students, being neurodivergent is not so straightforward. At age 11, Chloe ’24 was diagnosed with tuberous sclerosis complex, a rare genetic disorder that causes benign tumors to grow in various organs. Chloe, who requested her real name not be used in this article, has some of these tumors growing in her brain. She also has Turner Syndrome, often associated with nonverbal learning disorder, which has symptoms similar to autism. While Chloe has neurodivergent behaviours and characteristics, she does not have a formal neurodiverse diagnosis. Neurodivergent students are not all the same, making it more complex to navigate Harvard’s resources, feel welcomed in their spaces, and find community.
Neurodivergent in a neurotypical space
The academic and social environments at Harvard are designed around neurotypical ideals of learning and communication. Because of these ideals, the school has not fully considered how the college experience differs for neurodivergent students. These students must try to fit in into a space that was designed without them in mind.
Being open about her autism, Skov Jensen has received a lot of messages from other neurodivergents at Harvard. She commented that she “knew there were going to be others, but did not expect there to be so many already.” Skov Jensen shared that she has “a suspicion that there are quite a few undiagnosed autistic students at Harvard.” Many neurodivergent people do well at school, even excelling in their classes — a typical characteristic for a Harvard student — so it could be possible that there are a surprising number of neurodivergent people at Harvard.
Chloe agreed. She did well at school, a major reason why she was never evaluated as a child for any neurodiverse conditions. She says when a student does well in school, there is often no reason to suspect anything.
For a short period of time, King was one of those students. Once they figured out their neurodiversity, they “started to view Harvard in a completely different light.” Previously, King thought they struggled merely because Harvard is a “challenging educational institution.” Later, King realized their struggles were for other reasons. Harvard might undervalue neurodiverse students’ trials because they illustrate that Harvard is challenging, an ideal the elite academic institution likely wants to uphold.
“It was difficult because I couldn’t learn in the same ways as other people,” says King. Even though it is typical for students to find their classes difficult and struggle with them, neurodiverse students face even greater challenges in their classes. Often neurotypical spaces like Harvard value the aspects of learning that conflict with neurodivergent approaches to education. Harvard admits the best-performing students whom they believe can handle the workload at college. They often fail to realize that some of them are neurodiverse and have different needs when it comes to studying.
Chloe also has difficulties in neurotypical school settings. She struggles to finish certain tasks, primarily those requiring short term memory and visual processing. In practice, these challenges mean that transferring data from screen to paper takes her much longer than other students, leaving her at a disadvantage when institutional support is lacking.
Getting a correct diagnosis would help many students better understand their needs and get effective accommodations that smooth the transition to a new environment. Going to college without one, on the other hand, can negatively impact their experiences. King is taking time off next academic year, and their neurodiversity has impacted that decision. Firstly, they think online learning is not autism friendly. Secondly, they found their first year “really taxing” and that “it didn’t go the way that I had envisioned, [which] was primarily due to autism.”
Challenges go beyond just workload. According to Chloe, in neuroscience and psychology classes, where neurodiversity is taught, professors often have too strict definitions of how autism, brain tumors, and other neurological conditions manifest themselves. She said that many “fail to think about how these diagnostic categories are social constructions, and obviously subject to human biases and error, so sometimes [there is] a failure to view them as social constructions and view them critically.” For instance, professors might set strict criteria for what autism is and how autistic people are, while Chloe or other neurodivergent students who challenge those definitions could be in the audience.
However, while neurodiversity can negatively impact the college experience when adequate support is not provided, the condition is still a major part of students’ identity. Harvard’s holistic application process considers the applicant’s entire life story, and a neurodiverse life experience can stand out from the crowd. Chloe actually believes she is at Harvard because her brain works differently from the neurotypical majority. That same difference is “also what makes Harvard difficult sometimes, and so it’s kind of ironic.” In addition, Harvard needs to change the way faculty teaches about autism. According to Skov Jensen, “Currently, it is very ableist and inconsiderate of actually autistic people.”
Accommodations at Harvard
Given these unique sets of circumstances, Harvard’s accommodations are crucial for a neurodivergent student’s success. Harvard is already difficult, but managing it as a neurodivergent student makes it even more challenging. The Accessible Education Office offers accommodations for exams and housing, but the pathway to receiving them is not always clear.
Skov Jensen has been positively surprised by Harvard’s efforts. She comments that “Harvard has a lot of resources, such as the AEO and several advisors, which is very helpful when predictability and structure is important.” For her, the AEO has been “genuinely interested in making my life easier at Harvard.” The accommodations she needs have been “met fully with no hint of suspicion about my actual need for all of it,” and the office “even informed me about accommodations I was not aware of that may be very helpful during my time at Harvard.”
Despite having to take a gap year due to difficulties with neurodiversity, King reported that she is “excited to go back with a different lens, and hopefully be able to establish what [their] needs are and what accommodations I need to make it difficult in a reasonable way.”
The AEO has also been helpful for Chloe, which was “one of the reasons that I chose to come to Harvard.” After she was accepted, she set up a meeting with the AEO to familiarize herself with the office and immediately felt welcome. Unlike her experiences with standardized testing or other circumstances with strict accommodations guidelines, she said, “I wasn’t having to prove myself” having such unusual medical conditions. Coming to Harvard, she felt adequately supported and accommodated, despite not having the traditional neurodiverse diagnoses usually required for accommodations.
However, there is still clear room for improvement. While Skov Jensen thinks the AEO’s work has been helpful because autistic people highly prefer predictability and structure, at times the way the office works has gone against that principle.
“We won’t get our advisors until just before classes start, and that is difficult for me since I get anxious about having to make such important decisions very fast.” Opportunities are often only available during brief windows at Harvard, so without support, neurodiverse students are more likely to miss out. “Harvard could also do a better job at specifically reaching out to its disabled students about things that we in particular may struggle with such as move-in and class registration.”
Students with disabilities are also required to rely too heavily on self-advocacy. King hopes for students “not to be spoken for, but to be spoken with.” They feel Harvard should have “better infrastructure so that you’re not completely left high and dry to take care of yourself.” While King has been able to advocate for themself, they feel concerned for those who cannot and still need accommodations, such as non-speaking individuals. Being neurodivergent comes with its own set of challenges already, and taking students’ limited time and energy for self-advocacy adds to them.
King notes that if Harvard wants to model and prepare students for the real world and careers, the school misses important details in its approach. “In the real world we have ADA people, we have HR, we have supervisors and coworkers and friends. No one is ever completely and totally on their own and advocating for themselves, even if that means having legal representation or using a nonprofit service that assists and advocates for people with disabilities.” The AEO should coordinate with pre-professional or outside organizations to connect students with these advocates to smooth the transition after college.
Having needed neurodiverse accommodation without a formal neurodiversity diagnosis, Chloe comments that “Harvard should also provide resources for students to be evaluated for conditions like autism, so that the students can get that accommodation that they need.” She also hopes Harvard could provide accommodations on the admissions tests and application processes for graduate school, as she wants to pursue a medical degree. Providing medical documentation can be very complex, and clarity and support on that front could go a long way for a student like her.
Accessibility does not stop at providing adequate accommodations to those students who need them. Neurodivergent students have their own opinions about how the university could support them better. For example, Skov Jensen thinks that Harvard needs to invest in informing students and employees about different disabilities. She says, “ideally, faculty would receive training on how to make classes more accessible. It would also be ideal for Harvard to have disabled students advise them directly.”
She is hoping to start a committee consisting of students, faculty, AEO, and Harvard administration for creating better understanding of neurodiversity across campus. She highlights the importance of the university to “host events where people can intimately learn what it means to be disabled and hopefully give people the resources to be more accepting.”
Neurodiverse community on campus
Despite these challenges, students have formed a neurodiverse community on campus. This community helps them feel more connected to others in similar situations. They have clear ideas about making campus a better place for neurodivergent students and actively working toward a more inclusive campus. King said, “I have surrounded myself with a lot of other neurodivergent people and a lot of other people with disabilities” and they are “grateful for them and for that experience.” King is “working on building the community that I want and I want to make sure that [neurodivergent students] have the voice that they deserve on Harvard’s campus, not just as students, but as neurodivergent leaders.”
Chloe said, “at Harvard, I’ve met more neurodivergent people here than anywhere else and I think that’s an interesting thing.” She thinks having a brain that works differently than the brain of a neurotypical can help a student get into a school like Harvard, even though neurodiverse students face a different set of challenges.
Skov Jensen’s advocacy work has introduced her to more neurodivergent students on campus than she was expecting. The neurodivergent community allows her to openly talk about her diagnoses with others.
While the neurodivergent community is a safe space for open discussion about their experiences, negative connotations of neurodiversity present a challenge in a neurotypical world. Stereotypes and ignorance about neurodiversity can lead neurotypical individuals to avoid neurodivergent people. The social stigma can cause neurodivergent people to become ashamed of their differences.
When it comes to certain negative associations to autism and ADHD, Skov Jensen thinks it “especially comes from the stereotype that autistic people and those with ADHD are male children” and that they are “very often infantilized” because of that. Females are more often overlooked for autism or misdiagnosed for other disorders. At the moment, there are about 4 times more males with autism diagnoses than females, but researchers have suggested that this prevalence can be attributed to problems with diagnostic criteria and gender biases, not the nature of the disease.
Chloe adds that, in classes like psychology or neuroscience, pathologizing and “talking about neurodiversity in a very negative light or condescending tone, it feels odd as somebody who is autistic to be in a class like that when it’s been talked about in that way.” This can make the neurodiverse community feel isolated and not accepted as equal members of the wide university community.
“I really wish that people had the ability to let go of their preconceptions and just look at who I am as an individual,” Skov Jensen says.
