The College Solutions Blog

January 16, 2012

I met a teenage girl during the fall who was excited about applying to Hampshire College. She had visited the campus in Amherst, MA, had met professors and talked with students. She was smitten. She and her mother felt good that they had done their due diligence on the college, but then I asked them a question that drew a...

January 12, 2012

If you didn’t read my college blog post yesterday, I hope you do because it focused on a lot of hot-button issues for parents and teenagers trying to navigate the college process. The post, which was actually an email from the mom of a high school senior, touched upon such issues as: Brand name snob appeal Pushy relatives Mistrust of...

January 11, 2012

I received an email yesterday from a mom in Southern California, whose daughter Nicole is getting grief about the Southern universities that she has applied to.  Karen’s email raises a lot of interesting issues including preconceived notions about schools, the tendency of some parent(s) to push kids to attend their alma mater or state schools and a lack of understanding...

January 10, 2012

With crazy amounts of psychic energy being spent on getting teenagers into college, too many students and their parents think getting admitted is the hard part of the college process.  Actually, it’s not. Squeezing as much value out of the college experience once you’re a student is far more important. Unfortunately, however,  many students are graduating from college without learning...

January 9, 2012

I have been writing college blog posts recently about teenagers who have arguably been applying to the wrong colleges. (Scroll to the bottom to see my three previous posts.) All my posts have involved families who required financial aid, but today I’m sharing the plight of a father who is too wealthy to receive need-based help. Anxious Dad’s Email Here...

January 6, 2012

Winning private college scholarships can certainly help make college more affordable, but you need to know the realities of competing for college cash. My pet peeve about private scholarships is that people assume that they are the biggest source of college cash when they are really the smallest. Before you start hunting for private college scholarships, here are eight facts...

January 5, 2012

There are a lot of expensive colleges and universities in this country, but as I’ve mentioned many times before on my college blog, the sticker price is meaningless. The only figure that matters is the college’s net price. This is the price you get after any grants (free money) that you receive from a school are subtracted from the sticker...

January 4, 2012

I’ve been writing posts for my college blog recently about the W-R-O-N-G way to assemble a college list. If you missed them, here are my the posts: Another Dreadful College List Applying to the Wrong Universities Assembling a solid list of schools to apply to is critically important, but I’d argue that the vast majority of teenagers do a lousy...

January 3, 2012

During the holidays, I wrote a post about a teenager, who has been applying to inappropriate universities. (At least in my opinion.) If you didn’t get a chance to read the post, here it is: Applying to the Wrong Universities I wanted to revisit this issue because I believe this is arguably the No. 1 college admission mistake that teenagers...

January 2, 2012

I want to give a big thanks to all of my regular visitors — and the new folks too — who helped to make 2011 the best year ever for The College Solution! I know 2011 was my best year because I use Google Analytics to keep track of how many people visit my college blog. Now that we’re in...