How to bring or should I even bring up HFA on my application.
So I am kinda diagnosed with an alphabet soup of mental health syndromes but I don't have any life threatening and am high functioning. Should I even bring it up or is the information even relevant? Id likely bring it up in an essay or if not the additional info or even the COVID section and talk about how it semi-complicated the change to remote learning.
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Disclosing your HFA is totally up to you. You don't have to disclose it on your application if you don't wish, but if you want to receive accommodations in college (like extra time on tests), you'll need to eventually disclose it to the office of accessibility.
If you do disclose your HFA, you can definitely do so in an essay, the additional info section, or the COVID-19 section. I'd just advise against making it the centerpiece of the Common App essay, as you don't want to necessarily be defined by your HFA (it sounds like it's not a huge impact on your life in general, at least in academics). I'd also advise against disclosing it without context (i.e. "by the way, I have HFA"). If you do disclose, be sure to provide details how it impacted your life (your example of the transition to remote learning is perfect).
You can also ask your counselor to mention your HFA, especially if it led to exceptional challenges during high school (such as remote learning). This might be helpful if you want to lend "credibility" to any challenges you faced.
Hope this helps, and let me know if you have more questions!
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I’d like to add that the only accommodations are an IEP and am not taking any special ed classes or even accelerated courses to catch up. My school doesn’t do class rank but I’d estimate I’m top 15% at a top 10 high school in my state. Essentially I’m saying HFA isn’t affecting me academically.