The College Solutions Blog

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

4 Things You Need to Know About Federal Student Loans

It’s that time of year when parents and students are thinking about college loans. A few days ago, I wrote a college blog post that answered this question: Federal Student Loans: Where Do I Apply? Today, I want to answer three questions about Stafford Loans, which are the most popular federal student loans. Here’s the first question: Question No. 1:...

Federal Student Loans: Where Do I Apply?

Federal student loans are going to be a reality for most college students whether they will be freshmen in the fall or returning students. I’ve started getting questions about student loans from my college blog visitors so I’m going to start tackling them periodically. Here is the first student loan question in the queue: 1. Where do I apply for...

My Son's No. 1 College Choice Is ….

My son has decided where he’s going to college in the fall. After visiting 14 colleges and applying to 8 of them, Ben selected Beloit College. I wrote about why he decided to choose Beloit College on my other college blog over at CBSMoneyWatch. It was a long process, but the final result made all the hassles, including SAT prep,...

Financial Advice for College Graduates: 6 Financial Tips

I banged out an email full of financial advice this week to a soon-to-be college graduate, who luckily has already lined up a job. She wanted to know if she should start saving for retirement as soon as she graduates. Here’s what I told her: Absolutely! I was thrilled that this young woman was already thinking about retirement. As a...

Graduate School Programs? Shopping for the Right One

How do you shop for graduate school programs? With the economy still floundering, more Americans are considering attending graduate school. But how do you find the best ones? Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas A. Benton, an English professor at Hope College made a stab at answering that question. He observed that the universities receiving the highest graduate...

Waiting List Cry Babies: Stop the Tears

I have been reading the annual sob stories from students who are stuck on waiting lists at the nation’s snobbiest schools. These are the colleges and universities that reject almost everyone. The students on these waiting lists, which can contain 1,000 or more names, complain mightily about being stuck in limbo. They can’t psychologically get on with their lives until...

College Graduation Rates: Beware of Wildly Different Grad Rates

Here’s a grim college graduation rate statistic: Fewer than 60% of college students graduate in six years. Of course, noncompetitive schools, which accept nearly all comers, drag down the national graduation rates. For instance, only 12.1% of students at Mountain State University in Beckley, WV, which accepts all its applicants, graduate in six years. In contrast, 96.8% of Harvard students...

College Visit: 8 Things You Must Do

It’s college visit season. Juniors are fanning out to visit schools and seniors are on the go too as they visit colleges for the last time before making their final decisions. Too many teenagers and their families zip through college tours. It seems to become a contest of seeing how many colleges they can tour in the shortest period of...

College Search: 6 Ways to Find the Right College

Where do you begin a college search? When you research colleges, you’re going to want to find schools that will provide your teenagers with an excellent education and get them out the door in four years. But how do you even start such a daunting college search? Scattered around my blog, I’ve written plenty about how to conduct a college...

European Universities vs. American Universities: We Win

European universities are nothing like American colleges and universities. That’s the conclusion that I drew during our family’s two-week vacation in Spain and France. We were visiting my daughter Caitlin, who has been attending the University of Barcelona for two semesters. During the vacation, I kept getting into conversations with Europeans about their universities. I had some knowledge about European...