The College Solutions Blog

December 13, 2012

What is the best way to ace your final exams? This is a timely question as millions of high school and college students are taking their final exams. You might assume that reading textbooks and notes over and over again is the best way to study, but researchers from Purdue and Washington University insist that it’s not the best approach....

December 11, 2012

Is your child interested in picking a college major based on 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 the blockbuster...

December 7, 2012

I hear from a lot of parents who assume that their children will eventually go on to graduate school. And that’s hardly surprising since Americans who earn a master’s degree or a doctorate typically earn more in their lifetimes than the rest of us. For those who dream that their children will someday earn a PhD, I want to direct...

December 5, 2012

A mother recently asked me what constitutes a good SAT scores. I told her that it depends on the caliber of the school. At some colleges a 1600 out of a 2400 score is above average while at other schools, applicants with that kind of score wouldn’t even be seriously considered. At some of the nation’s most prestigious schools, a...

December 3, 2012

Today’s post comes courtesy of a new website, LiberalArtsColleges.com, which was created by David Kochanek after he realized that there wasn’t a single online source dedicated to all liberal arts colleges. As some of you know, I’m a huge admirer of liberal arts colleges and both of my children ended up at one.  I believe liberal arts colleges represent the...

November 30, 2012

This week the National Association for College Admission Counseling released its 10th annual report on college admission trends. Here are some of the study highlights: College Enrollment Since the turn of the century, college enrollment has grown 37 percent. In 2000, 15.3 million Americans were attending college while today there are more than 21 million. The number of high school...

November 28, 2012

In my last college blog post I wrote about how some colleges and universities are exploiting their nontenured professors. If you missed it, here it is: The Dangers of Being Taught by Part-Time Professors This is such an important subject for families with college-bound teenagers that I’m sharing more information courtesy of Josh Boldt, an adjunct professor and the creator...

November 26, 2012

When your teenagers reach college, who will be teaching them? Chances are excellent that many of your children’s professors will be part-timers or full-time professors without any chance of getting tenured. The number of adjunct professors on college campuses has soared in the past decade. Today only thirty percent of college professors have tenure or are on the tenure track....

November 21, 2012

With Thanksgiving just one day away, I want to express my deep gratitude for all of you who spend time on my college blog. I appreciate each of you and especially the loyal visitors who stop by regularly. I want to give a special shout out to all of you! The number of visitors to my blog continues to climb...

November 19, 2012

Parents and teenagers are understandably interested in colleges and universities that prepare students for eventual jobs. What schools, they wonder, will give their grads an advantage in the job world? It’s a tough question to answer because the statistics that schools share about their graduates’ success in finding jobs are often wrong. To learn more about this sad reality, read...