Transition to college or non traditional college situations

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The teenager has been doing school at home for the last few years and should be in the last 1.5 years of school (in traditional class terms) by fall. We have had a relaxed structure. She picks subjects but we do this based off of a standard school curriculum. Her choice to do one class subject at a time. She also keeps a later in the day schedule. This has worked well in dealing with sleep disorder issues. This works well here. But generally college doesn't work this way.

I hope to try to transition to something more of a typical day schedule and doing more than one subject at once. But this and some of the other executive function issues are really a challenge and I have concerns how this will translate into college life. I know how challenging it can be to keep everything together and a large class load even if you take a minimum amount of classes.

Has anyone found something really non traditional or a way to hack the current college system to make it more tolerable for someone dealing with these daily challenges?

I got a lot more out of college by taking a non-traditional route. For the first few years, I tried to follow The Plan: 15 credit hour semesters, all that. My grades were OK but I had a lot of breakdowns and didn't retain much information.

My grades stayed the same, but I had a lot less stress, learned more, and participated more in class after I went down to 9 credit hours a semester. My husband (ADHD) experienced the same thing taking 12 hours instead of 16, except his grades improved a lot more (from borderline flunking out to borderline Deans List). And he had time for a part-time job, and so did I. That employment history was as helpful in getting up his first job as his BSME.

We learned it by accident, having to reduce our class schedules after our daughter was born. It's advice I'm going to give all my kids on purpose.

I am fortunate that I felt like I had the time to take eight years to complete my degree.

I took either 6 or 9 credits throughout my college career.

I also worked full-time.

I was also an "older student," graduating at age 45.

Despite my executive-functioning difficulties, I managed to pull a 3.8 GPA.

I think your daughter can succeed in college by taking less classes each term and taking longer to graduate.
It is fine to finish in 5 or 6 years instead of 4.
But it is also a good idea to start transitioning now to more than one subject at once.
Transitioning between different tasks is important for most jobs too.
It is best to transition either the sleep schedule or the subjects one at a time, instead of trying to transition both at the same time.
I would try to transition the subjects first.
I think she has to agree that learning to study more than one subject at once is important for college and future career, so she has to be willing to try doing it, even if it is very uncomfortable at the beginning.

Those that took lower class loads. Were you able to take enough credits to still be qualified for financial aid? IIRC there is a minimum amount of "time" you have to be taking classes to apply for student loans or grants in the US. I think it used to be 3/4 time based on what they considered a full time student.

We do a full 8 period day at home, but I doub,t based on what I have seen, that my son will be doing a full course load when the time comes. Right now, we are planning on going the online route (making sure the credits can transfer to an appropriate brick and mortar when that is sensible to do so. )

Even though we do a full-course load we have more issues with non-preferred subjects, so we are probably going to end up doing the reverse of most people and we will need to front-load the major classes and end with core requirements.

My husband still qualified for loans at 9 hours, as long as he signed up for a minimum of 12. He learned to sign up for 12 or sometimes 15, and then drop anything he had less than a solid C in on the last day to drop classes. It raised the debt load, but he got through and those loans are history now.

It would have disqualified me from my scholarship...

...but by the time I learned to do that, I'd already stressed out, burned out, and changed majors so many times that it had expired anyway. It was only good for four years, no matter how good my grades were or how many hours I took. I paid out of pocket for the rest (I was in-state, and I graduated like a year or so before tuition started going insane), but at 9 credit hours it added up to like $900 a semester and I could come up with that pretty easily.

Even if I'd had to pay for the whole thing, or go a semester and then work two jobs for a semester to raise money pay-as-you-go, alternating all the way through, it would have been better that way. I wasted a lot of time (not just mine) and almost $10K (8 semesters at full-time) that could have gone to someone who could get through on the traditional route and actually KNEW what they wanted.

In our area, a lot of homeschoolers start taking community college classes while finishing high school. Perhaps your daughter could pick one to try each semester so you can start figuring out what works for her...

I'm on a reduced course load, taking 2-3 classes per term. I don't think I could handle more than that - in fact when I try to push that limit I end up dropping a class mid-term.

My son qualified for the Office of Disabilities help on his campus. He has a letter of accommodations to give to his professor on the first day of class. And the Clinical Neuropsychologist who tested him also added in the test results letter to the college that our son could not take a full load of classes due to stress levels with his Level 1 Autism (formerly called Aspergers Syndrome). And that he take a reduced amount of classes -- but that he can still be qualified for financial aid as a "full time" student with his disorder. The college agreed to it as a result.