The College Solutions Blog

August 13, 2009

Last week when I was filling in as a guest lecturer for the college counseling certificate program at the University of California, San Diego, I exchanged messages with a mother/college counselor who felt very strongly that kids in San Diego should attend college here. Her arguments? She reasoned that students couldn’t get summer jobs at fast-food restaurants and at other...

August 12, 2009

Stories about how students can save and earn money in colleges are a dime a dozen. Sell textbooks, buy a cheap meal plan, blah, blah, blah. I get bored whenever I read (or write) one. Yesterday, however,  Zac Bissonnette, a talented  young guy and student, who writes about college for The Daily Beast and AOL’s WalletPop, sent me his version...

August 11, 2009

Are colleges picking on students who hope to earn an art degree. It sure looks like it, if you believe an article in The New York Times that suggests that schools of fines arts, theater and dance are under siege. During this recession, I doubt that any university is considering closing down its engineering or business school, but departments that...

August 10, 2009

Why can’t you take a literature course at Amherst College, a physics class at MIT and a journalism class at the University of Missouri and be on your way to obtaining a degree? This might seem like a silly question, but cobbling together a degree after taking virtual classes at different institutions might not seem so far-fetched in the future....

August 9, 2009

As usual, I’m sharing with you the posts that I wrote last week for my college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com. The post that got the most hits, and also great play on the CBS site, focused on Forbes’ latest college rankings. As you’ll discover when you read The Best Colleges You’ve Never Heard Of, the magazine’s more realistic rankings system humiliated...

August 7, 2009

If you look at the just-released college rankings from Forbes Magazine, you’ll notice some peculiar numbers. Forbes ranks Cornell as the 105th best school in the country, but U.S. News & World Report ranks it as the 14th best national university. Forbes rates Dartmouth and the University of Pennslyvania as the 98th and 83rd  best schools, but US News college...

August 6, 2009

When can a student be considered independent for financial aid purposes? This is a question that a lot of families ask as they contemplate their huge college expenses. When I was back in St. Louis, my hometown, earlier this summer, my nephew Nick asked whether he could qualify for federal financial aid as an independent student.  It’s obvious what the...

August 5, 2009

I am the guest lecturer this week for an online college counseling course that’s offered through the extension service of the University of California, San Diego. It’s the second time that I’ve taught the class and it’s nice to get a chance to see what high school counselors, who are enrolled in the class, are thinking. Here’s a question that...

August 4, 2009

How do you get into the Ivy League?  Be a legacy applicant. A friend of my blog, Lee Bierer, an education columnist for the Charlotte Observer and an independent college counselor, writes about Ivy League legacy chances in her latest column. Here’s where you can check out her take on Ivy League admissions for legacies. It’s clear that legacies enjoy...

August 3, 2009

Merit scholarships have always been controversial in higher-ed circles because many of these awards end up going to rich kids. A study just released by the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute suggests that college scholarship practices have led to lower numbers of minority and lower-income students on campuses. This finding would refute the argument that many college administrators make that...