New and Admitted Students

Welcome! 

Congratulations on your acceptance to Cornell! If you have decided that Cornell is the place for you, welcome to our community! Below you will find more information about how to work with Student Disability Services (SDS), and how to request disability accommodations. 

If you‘re still figuring out if you want to attend Cornell, a part of that decision process may be learning about how disability accommodations work at Cornell. The information below may help you make that decision. 

Wherever you are in the process, we are here to answer your questions. Again, congratulations on your acceptance and thank you for learning more about Student Disability Services! 

Registering with Student Disability Services 

If you will be enrolling at Cornell, we recommend self-disclosing your disability and requesting any needed accommodations well in advance. This gives us as much time as possible to work with you to put an accommodation plan in place and arrange any needed services before you start at Cornell.  

Here are our suggested deadlines for requesting disability accommodations or services: 

  • Incoming first year students: let us know by June 15th
    (or by May 15th if your request involves disability-related housing needs) 
  • Transfer students: July 1st 
  • Incoming graduate or professional students: June 15th
    (if your request involves disability-related housing needs, please reach out as soon as possible) 

You start this process by submitting a “Disability Self-Disclosure Form” to our office. Please visit our Get Started page to access that form and to learn more about what information is helpful to share with us. We look forward to reviewing your submitted information and connecting with you in the coming weeks. 

How do disability services differ between high school and college? 

At the high school level, accommodations are determined proactively through meetings with teachers, family members or caregivers, and school staff. However, in college you are responsible for being your own self-advocate. You can still ask your family or caregivers for guidance and share whatever information you wish to with them, but the college will only directly communicate with you about your access and accommodations. 

In college, you are responsible for using the disability accommodation process at your school to request and use disability accommodations. The section below has more information about using accommodations specifically at Cornell, as well as your rights and responsibilities at Cornell.   

If you are interested in more general information about the differences between using disability services in high school and college, we recommend reading the information on the U.S. Department of Education’s website on transitioning from high school to college. 

SDS staff are here to help you navigate this transition. Please let us know if you have any questions! 

Learn More

We have a frequently asked questions page that addresses many questions that you may have about Cornell and disability accommodations.  

Our website is also a good resource for information as well. Please explore it to learn more about: