The College Solutions Blog

October 13, 2014

When money is an issue, students need to be strategic about where they apply to college. I am sharing a story of a young man from Los Angeles that illustrates why the common practice of applying to a bunch of schools without considering whether aid is a realistic option is a dangerous strategy. The teenager, who wants to major in...

October 13, 2014

For many students the biggest source of money will be from the colleges themselves. That’s why it’s important for you to understand what would motivate any school to give your child one of its awards. Schools don’t dispense grants and scholarships to be nice. They give awards because they expect to get something valuable from a student in return. To...

October 13, 2014

If your child is a “B” student, you may have more options than you might assume. Don’t believe me? Here is a story of a young woman – I’ll call her Katie – whose mom is a friend of mine. Katie attended a private high school in California where she earned a 3.0 GPA. She applied to these four private...

October 13, 2014

The Guardian newspaper in London once published an article that suggested that children of upper-middle-class families are having to attend public universities because they are too affluent to receive need-based aid and they aren’t getting scholarship from private institutions. What the reporter, who happens to be the wife of Bill Keller, the former executive editor of The New York Times, didn’t seem to realize...

October 13, 2014

The College Board is a favorite resource of mine when I want to get a quick read on whether a school is stingy, financially awesome, or somewhere in between. What you’ll find on the College Board is equally relevant whether you are seeking schools that provide generous need-based aid or are hunting for schools that provide merit scholarships that are awarded without...

October 13, 2014

COLLEGEdata is a valuable website to bookmark for anyone researching colleges and universities. In this video, I illustrate how you can use COLLEGEdata’s search engine to sort schools in two categories: 1. Colleges that provide excellent aid packages for students who have financial need. 2. Schools that provide a large percentage of their students with merit scholarships. After using the search...

October 13, 2014

I conducted this interview with Veronica Longstreth, who has some excellent ideas on how to get additional scholarship money for underrepresented students. I apologize for the poor quality of this video! The information within the video, however, is definitely worth checking out. Unfortunately, colleges and universities have been pouring more and more money into merit aid for affluent students (like...

October 13, 2014

As I’ve been discussing in this class, many college financial aid letters are confusing and misleading. Recognizing this reality, the federal government created a template for a model financial aid letter called the Shopping Sheet. If your child or client received a financial aid award that uses the Shopping Sheet, it will be far easier to understand whether a school is...

October 13, 2014

As recently as the early 1990s, most students did not take out college loans. Today nearly 72% of students borrow to pay for college due to the runaway cost of college. The typical student borrower is leaving school with debt of roughly $35,000. Federal college loan debt exceeds credit-card debt. Is $35,000 a reasonable amount of student debt? Here is a chart created...

October 13, 2014

According to a 2014 Federal Reserve report, nearly one in three borrowers in repayment are at least 90 days late with their payments. There are, however, many ways that borrowers can avoid getting in trouble with their student loans. Here are eight tips to repay college debt: 1. Identify outstanding loans. After leaving or graduating from college, borrowers have six...