The College Solutions Blog

December 17, 2009

Want to know what college admission officers are really thinking? The Wall Street Journal and Unigo managed to get admission deans from eight prestigious schools, including Bryn Mawr College, Grinnell College,  Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania and Weslyan University to parpticipate in a panel discussion that touched on many issues that are relevant to collegebound teenagers. You can watch the...

December 16, 2009

My daughter Caitlin arrived home last night after studying abroad for the semester at the University of Barcelona. I am thrilled to have her home and I know it’s going to be very hard for me when she flies back to Spain at the end of January. As I discovered, a study abroad program can be a life-changing experience, but...

December 15, 2009

This is the time of year when families of high school seniors start asking questions about financial aid forms. Most parents will only need to complete the FAFSA or Free Application for Federal Student Aid. A few hundred private schools also require the CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE. I just got a call from a dear friend, who had been notified by...

December 14, 2009

This is the time of year when high school teachers and counselors are flooded with requests to write college recommendation letters. Writing a college recommendation letter is a thankless job and I’m glad that I’ll never have to write one. But that doesn’t mean that I’m off the hook.  My role in the college recommendation process is to make sure...

December 13, 2009

Want to get into Harvard? Consider taking a gap year. It’s not easy getting into Havard or other elite schools, but some high school seniors manage to get into their dream schools by taking the year off and pursuing other interests through a gap year program here or overseas. I wrote about gap years experiences last week for my college...

December 11, 2009

If your teenager bombs on the SAT or ACT, you don’t need to despair. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts on my college blog, students can get into hundreds of schools even if they withhold their SAT or ACT test scores. See links below to some of these posts. Today I want to draw your attention to a SAT and...

December 10, 2009

This is the time for parents of high school seniors to start thinking about applying for financial aid. I was reminded of that today when the college counselor at my son’s high school asked me to talk to his advisory group about the FAFSA and the CSS Financial Aid Profile. Just about everybody in the room had heard of the...

December 9, 2009

At first I ignored most social media. I don’t even have a Facebook page yet though that is high on my to-do list. I decided, however,  I needed to embrace social media if I was ever going to get the word about about this college blog and my other one at CBSMoneyWatch. I initially thought that Twitter was the most...

December 9, 2009

It’s all too common for college coeds to be raped or to be the victims of an attempted rape. According to a federal study, one out of five women are sexually assaulted in college. What’s equally alarming is about 95% of these women remain silent. The Center for Public Integrity has just released a new study based on a nine-month...

December 8, 2009

Graduation rates at most universities is a disgrace.  Fewer than 60% of  college  students graduate in six years. Many of the rest never do earn  a bachelor’s degree. I’ve written about low graduation rates many times (see links below) and it’s always struck me as unfair that so many educators blame this tragedy solely on the students. That’s why I...