The College Solutions Blog

February 11, 2014

Today I am sharing a guest post by Bradford Pine, a financial advisor in Garden City, NY, who wrote about his experience with his daughter, who has been receiving acceptances and merit aid scholarships from schools. He explains how he lassoed a $14,000-a-year scholarship just by asking. Lynn O’Shaughnessy Here is the link to his entire blog post: My Personal...

February 7, 2014

Teenagers often pick college major without knowing much  about what they entail or whether they can handle the work. I was thinking about this today when I read a new report from ACT Inc., entitled, The Condition of STEM 2013. The report shared statistics on the number of high school students in the 2013 graduating class, who were interested in...

February 4, 2014

Is your child interested in picking a college major based on those ubiquitous lists of the country’s highest-paying college degrees? Plenty of students are pursuing degrees that they perceive will generate the biggest salaries. I assume that’s why business is the most popular major – more than one out of every five students select it. I can’t resist mentioning that...

January 30, 2014

If  you have to pay nonresident tuition, are public universities worth the price? I think this is a good time to examine this issue since the Princeton Review just released it’s 2014 best value list of public colleges and universities. The Princeton Review included many state schools on its value list that are extremely expensive for nonresidents. According to federal...

January 27, 2014

Every year, 20 million families file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and plenty of them inadvertently make costly mistakes. To avoid the same fate, I’d urge you to check out the Edvisors Network’s free 201-page guide, entitled Filing the FAFSA. The guide, which you can download from Edvisors’ website, provides advice on how to maximize eligibility for...

January 23, 2014

The Association of American Colleges and Universities released a report yesterday that suggests that by their peak earning years, college graduates who majored in the liberal arts are earning higher salaries, on average, than students who studied in professional and pre-professional fields such as nursing and business. I wanted to share the study, which relied upon data from the U.S....

January 21, 2014

With out-of-control college costs a reality, it’s not surprising that parents and their children are especially interested in colleges that are springboards to good-paying jobs. Unfortunately, it’s hard to know what those schools are. Meaningless Grad Salary Data As I’ve mentioned before, the job statistics that colleges and universities share with prospective students are laughably misleading. Low percentages of graduates...

January 17, 2014

A couple of years ago I listened in on a webinar about SAT strategies that impressed me. The guest speaker was Jeb Applerouth, who runs an eponymous test-prep firm that’s headquartered in Atlanta. Jeb gave me permission to share the following blog post where he discusses  whether there is an ideal time to take the SAT or ACT.   Lynn O’Shaughnessy...

January 14, 2014

Would you like to make college more affordable? I assume you do since you’re visiting my college blog. While visiting my blog and reading my book will certainly help you become a smart college shopper, plenty of parents, as well as college consultants, have urged me to create an online course that would include step-by-step instructions on how families can...

January 13, 2014

You can learn much more about how to afford college by enrolling in my upcoming online course –  Cutting the Cost of College. I designed this course to help you save money by making you a smart college shopper.    Lynn O’Shaughnessy What happens if your child recently received a college admission deferral letter? Plenty of students, who applied to schools...