Which schools seem to be best in dealing with autistic graduate students?

[Catria]

Since the challenges of autism do not stop once one earns an undergraduate degree, or even at the end of the coursework stage of a graduate program, I wonder which schools may be best for autistic graduate students, at least in terms of disability services. I understand the advisor is a factor (as much as it is a factor for neurotypicals) but, so long as they fit one another, and not just in terms of research interests, the advisor is, unfortunately, not the end of the story as far as life as an autistic graduate student is concerned, even at the research stage.

For the coursework stage I do not think it is overly different from what's made available to autistic undergraduates. And we know that autistic students look to graduate school for similar reasons to that of neurotypicals, and can be just as motivated to succeed. Oh, sure, some autistic graduate students "master out" if they realize they only really excelled at coursework (when that is the case, it's usually because of the structure coursework provides), while others take advantage of the looser structure of the research stage to be able to work on the topics they want for extended periods at a time.

If field is important, physics (or astronomy in the case of UChicago).

Perhaps I'm wrong but I always hear about Caltech, MIT and Carnegie Mellon (in that order; I'm not even sure as to whether I would be applying to Caltech or MIT though, knowing I would assuredly apply to Carnegie Mellon if I tried my hand again) seem to be cutting-edge in dealing with autistic graduate students, whereas other schools may be competent with autistic undergraduates but comparatively clueless with autistic graduate students, with UIUC and WUSTL being in-between (but I would probably think UIUC is better on that particular count, just not at the level CMU is). Notre Dame is decades behind Carnegie Mellon with both groups in that respect.

UPenn, UChicago and Waterloo (as are Carleton, York, and possibly UVic) are unknown autistic quantities to me even though, research-wise, I know who I want to work with at these schools, and for what.

[fuzzylogician]

I have no knowledge that would help here, but it seems to me that it would make more sense to first identify schools that would be a good research match, and then investigate their disabilities office further. Those schools might be easier to identify (at least on this board) because there are more sources of information that could help. In general, no matter how good the resources at a school are, I don't think that going to a school that doesn't actually have a department or advisor to that could support your research would be a good idea.  

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

What sort of services are you looking for? What do you mean by "dealing with" autistic graduate students? You need to be more quantitative, I'm afraid.

[TakeruK]

I think it is important to seek schools that have resources to help you succeed so I do think you are on the right track to think about finding a school that will support you. I also want to second fuzzy's advice that you do need both resources to help you succeed and a program that will match your research interests. And I think fuzzy rightly pointed out that on this forum, the expertise and knowledge will mostly be about the research side.

But that doesn't mean you should not seek out schools with notably good resources in parallel. I can connect you with people who can help with this part. There are groups of people (e.g. the Equity and Inclusion in Physics & Astronomy facebook group) that exist to help connect students like you to the resources they need. The point of these types of groups are to link up people who care about these issues across a large number of institutions around the world, and many of these people will know about the climate and resources available at their school.

So, if you would like to go down that path or at least explore your options, send me a PM and we can figure out what to do next. I can present the question to these resources for you, or introduce you to some people, etc. But this is probably better done in PM so just let me know if you'd like that.

Finally, you probably do know this already but just a reminder that everyone's experience will be different and personal. So, it's hard for me (or anyone) to say that School X knows how to work with autistic students because what one person needs could be very different from another. So, I wouldn't necessarily go by generalizations about a school but instead evaluate each school based on how their resources can help you.

[Catria]

21 hours ago, fuzzylogician said:

I have no knowledge that would help here, but it seems to me that it would make more sense to first identify schools that would be a good research match, and then investigate their disabilities office further. Those schools might be easier to identify (at least on this board) because there are more sources of information that could help. In general, no matter how good the resources at a school are, I don't think that going to a school that doesn't actually have a department or advisor to that could support your research would be a good idea.  

Any schools I mentioned by name in the OP are mentioned for research reasons. I know which professors would best align with my research interests at each listed location.