The College Solutions Blog

Valuable insights from Lynn O’Shaughnessy
a nationally recognized college expert.

Checking the Generosity of Your Child’s College Picks

When students are developing their college lists, most of them (unless their parents are wealthy and don’t mind writing monster checks) should be paying attention to the net price of all their school picks. Net price is what a school will cost you after scholarships and grants are deducted. An email that I received from a mom over the weekend...

Studying Abroad: What Parents Need to Know

Below you’ll find a guest blog that Bob Bessette, the father of a rising senior at Bowdoin College in Maine, wrote. This post first appeared on my college blog in December when Bessette’s daughter was finishing up her semester abroad in Ireland. I am rerunning this blog post primarily because my own son Ben, who is a rising junior at...

50 Reasons Why You Don’t Need to Attend an Elite College

The 2012-2013 college admission season hasn’t even officially started, but I’ve already been hearing from parents who are stressed about paying for elite schools that are on their teenagers’ lists. Some of these parents believe that they have an obligation to incur huge debt if their children get accepted into the most prestigious schools. Here’s my worst example: Last spring...

Finding An Independent College Counselor

In my last college blog post, I wrote about the enmity that admission officers at elite colleges and universities tend to exhibit toward independent college counselors. If you missed it, here it is: Elite Schools Dissing College Consultants While elite schools argue that families can navigate the process by themselves, they ignore this fact: colleges operate as businesses and their...