The College Solutions Blog

September 28, 2016

Here is what typically happens during college admission season: Students apply to whatever colleges they want without having any clue about whether these schools will give them grants and/or scholarships. Parents are often nervously okay with their children disregarding price when finalizing their lists. The attitude of these moms and dads can be summed up this way:  Go ahead and...

September 18, 2016

This is the time of year when parents of teenagers, who are excellent test takers,  start thinking about National Merit Scholarships. Next month, high school juniors will be taking the PSAT, which is a requirement to qualify for National Merit honors. Meanwhile, the National Merit Semifinalist score cut offs for high school seniors who took this test as juniors, was...

September 4, 2016

Are you eager to discover ways to find wonderful colleges and shrink the cost of a bachelor’s degree? I can help. I’ll be holding a free online presentation that will share with you five ways to find wonderful schools and shrink the cost of college. Everyone who attends the one-hour workshop will receive one of my resource guides, The Ultimate...

August 22, 2016

Will your children graduate from college? And will they graduate with their declared academic major? These are critically important questions that families routinely overlook. Unfortunately, families focus primarily on getting into college and not on whether their children will actually succeed and obtain a bachelor’s degree. Too often students fail to graduate. Or they fail to earn a degree in...

August 6, 2016

This is the time to start your college essay. That’s why I am excited to share a three-step method to create a winning college essay. This guest post comes from Janine Robinson, who created Essay Hell, a phenomenal blog that’s stuffed with advice about creating college admission essays. By Janine Robinson After working with thousands of students from all over...

July 28, 2016

One of the biggest questions that parents with college-bound children puzzle with is if their child has a chance for financial aid. This is more confusing than you might think because at some schools a family could qualify for need-based aid if they make $200,000 a year and at another school, the ceiling for aid could be $70,000. The first...

July 18, 2016

If borrowing through federal student loans to pay for college isn’t enough, private college loans are an option. With the 2016-2017 college lending season just beginning, this is my third and final post about borrowing for college. If you missed my first two posts on college loans, here they are: The Best College Loan Two Ways Parents Can Borrow For...

July 11, 2016

Will you need to borrow to pay for college? As I mentioned in my last post, if you need to borrow the best loan will usually be the federal Direct Loan. These loans are the responsibility of students, but parents can repay this loan for their children. If you missed the post on student loans, here it is: The Best College...

June 24, 2016

As recently as the early 1990s, most students did not take out college loans. Today roughly two out of every three students borrow to pay for college due to the runaway cost of college. The typical student borrower is now leaving school with debt of roughly $35,000. Just the outstanding federal college loan debt now exceeds credit-card debt. Keep this...

June 14, 2016

How do you know if the colleges or universities that your child is looking at would provide him or her with an excellent education? You won’t. College pricing is inching closer to transparency thanks to net price calculators and other tools,  but it’s difficult to form an educated opinion about the strength of a school’s learning environment. Evaluating an Institution’s...