The College Solutions Blog

August 24, 2008

 It’s easy for parents to feel financially exploited when they send their kids off to college. The costs of a bachelor’s degree continues to soar far higher than the inflation rate. But what many families hadn’t bargained on is that schools are making packs with the devil, a/k/a credit card companies, to ensure that their kids graduate with plastic debt....

August 22, 2008

Whooppeee!!! U.S. News & World Report released its latest college rankings today. This marks the 25th time that the magazine has issued its numerical rankings on the best colleges and universities in the country. I’d say that is 25 times too many. As I mention in my book, The College Solution, and elsewhere on my blog, the rankings are horribly...

August 21, 2008

For lots of parents, plane tickets are the college deal breaker. Many parents balk at letting their kids attend any school that will require them to fly. I think this focus on airline costs can be unfortunate. Sure plane tickets are even more expensive than a year ago, but the important thing is looking at all your potential costs and...

August 19, 2008

Before teenagers start pouring over the Fiske Guide to Colleges, the Princeton Review’s 368 Best Colleges, U.S. News & World Report rankings or any other publication, they need to think about what makes them tick. Teens can’t really find wonderful academic fits until they examine their own personalities, as well as their likes and dislikes. A friend of mine who...

August 16, 2008

For anyone who would like to hear me talk about college strategies, I will be in the studios of KPBS, the public radio station in San Diego (89.5 FM), on Monday. I’ll be chatting and answering listeners’ questions from 10 a.m. to 10:25 a.m. on the These Days program. If you can’t catch it, you can hear the segment later...

August 15, 2008

I’ve only run across two or three people out here in California, who have heard of my daughter’s college. Even when Caitlin tells people the name of her school-–Juniata College–they stumble on the pronunciation. I used to do the same thing before we visited the college that’s nestled in the Allegheny Mountains in rural Pennsylvania. It’s obviously easier on the...

August 13, 2008

In July, The New York Times ran a lengthy front-page story about teenagers’ abandonment of books. Kids would rather read online than pick up a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird or a Jane Austen novel. My son Ben shares that sentiment. He will sometimes stumble onto a book that he loves like The Life of Pi, but it’s got...

August 12, 2008

I hate the SAT. I don’t know any parent who likes it except for one of my friends. Her daughter, who is now at Stanford, earned a perfect SAT reading score. I never heard her griping. A couple of years ago, I was worrying about how my daughter, who is now a college sophomore, would score on the SAT. When...

August 10, 2008

Last night my daughter got a disturbing text message from one of her college classmates, who had spent the summer interning and attending classes with her in Orizaba, Mexico. “Did you hear the horrible news?” her friend Sarah texted. We had settled in to watch the Olympics when Caitlin got the message that was followed up seconds later with a...

August 8, 2008

I believe most parents think high school students already suffer through too many standardized tests before they can toss their No. 2 pencils. Apparently the College Board, which makes loads of money off the the SAT, SAT subjects tests and the PSAT, has concluded that kids aren’t spending enough time filling little ovals into test booklets. The College Board has...