• I'm determined: A new project developed and sponsored by the Virginia Department of Education’s Training and Technical Assistance Centers, focused on providing direct instruction, models, and opportunities to practice skills associated with self-determined behavior beginning at the elementary level and continuing through a student’s educational career. Visit I'm determined.
  
  
• Work, Assistive Technology and Transition-Aged Youth newly updated manual from the National Assistive Technology (AT) Advocacy Project. Get it here.
  
  
• Preparation is key to gaining accommodations
  on ACT college entrance test. Find out how to prepare in this new action information sheet from PACER. Get it here.
  
  
• Special IMPACT newsletter devoted to news and information about postsecondary education for students with intellectual disabilities. Get it here.
  
  
• Learn Your Rights and Responsibilities: The U.S. Department of Education has updated its informative guide, Students with Disabilities Preparing for Postsecondary Education: Know Your Rights and Responsibilities. Get the updated guide here.
  
  
• Student Summary of Performance: Learn about this IDEA provision and how to use it to assist with transition to higher education. Get details here.
  
  
• List of Colleges that Deemphasize the SAT and ACT in Admissions: Browse more than 700 accredited, bachelor degree-granting institutions which do not use the SAT I or ACT to make admissions decisions about substantial numbers of freshman applicants. Find it here.
  
  
• How do your skills measure up? Use this checklist of skills and behaviors to see how prepared you are to take on the challenges of college life.
  
  
• Help us spread the word about this Web site! Download the VCQ Flyer (PDF) to post and distribute.
  
  
• Tell us what you think! We'd like your feeback on this Web site. Fill out our quick survey.
  

• The Youth Leadership Forum program seeks to empower young people with disabilities to further develop their leadership skills. Students, serving as Delegates from communities throughout Virginia, participate in a wide range of activities and learning experiences during the four day Youth Leadership Forum set on a university campus. Applications for the 2012 class will be accepted until April 30, 2012. More information available here.
  
  
  
• Say YES to College happens May 22-24, 2012 at Old Dominion University. It's a conference for high school students designed to ease the transition from high school to college. Application deadline is April 6, 2012. More information here.
  
  
• Think College has two Webinars scheduled for early 2012. Check them out here.
  
  
  
• Future Quest 2011 was held on November 19, 2011. Materials from many workshops are available here.
  
  
• VaCollegeQuest Webinar Archives :: View the archives of our Webinars:
  
  • SELF-ADVOCACY: Making It Happen in College and Beyond presented by Dr. Henry Reiff on September 17, 2008.
    
    
  • Postsecondary Educational Opportunities for Students with Intellectual Disabilities presented on October 29, 2008 by Stephanie Smith Lee and Dr. Heidi Graff.

"I led a life filled with the answers but had no way to get them out. Often my thoughts and ideas felt trapped. Sometimes I was so full of thoughts that needed to get out, I would blurt them out at the most inappropriate times and places. But I had a dream to go on to college and to go into a helping profession. So I had to figure it out on my own."

- Joy Cobb tells her story.