The College Solutions Blog

August 31, 2012

As another standardized test season kicks off, ACT test takers should know about ACT superscoring. To understand what superscoring is, here’s some background: Historically, college admission offices used a student’s composite ACT score that’s made up of four underlying categories: English Mathematics Reading Science The test maker averages the four subcores, with each ranging from 1 to 36, to create...

August 29, 2012

I’m always excited when I run across a new resource to help families research colleges. Today I’m happy to share a valuable one from The Chronicle of Higher Education. College Completion is a microsite within the website of the higher-ed trade publication. I mentioned the tool briefly in this recent college blog post: 12 Ways to Find and Research Colleges....

August 26, 2012

This is the time of year when parents are stressing about paying for their child’s college tab. I’ve been hearing from parents who haven’t been able to borrow enough for college. I thought I’d share one of these emails. A Mom’s Dilemma Here is the mom’s note: I would like to know what to do if you don’t qualify for...

August 24, 2012

I wrote the following post last August, but with college students heading back to school, I decided it was worthwhile to run it again. LO Before my son Ben left to start his sophomore year at Beloit College, we talked about the advice in a chapter of The Thinking Student’s Guide to College: 75 Tips for Getting a Better Education....

August 21, 2012

How do you locate good colleges and universities? I get that question a lot. Today I want to share some online resources to find and research schools. In no particular order, here are resources to check out: 1. Do-It-Yourself College Rankings. Do-It-Yourself College Rankings is the creation of Michelle Kretzschmar, the mother of a college student, who has a background...

August 20, 2012

Are you stressed about all your children’s college choices? Plenty of parents are.  And it’s not surprising when you consider that there are roughly 2,700 four-year colleges and universities in the U.S.  The littlest ones have less than 100 students while the biggest state school nearly equals the population of Santa Fe, NM. A TED Talk on Choice With the...

August 15, 2012

As I’ve said many times, students shouldn’t be applying to colleges unless they have a good idea of what those institutions will cost them. It’s easy to obtain these formerly elusive cost figures now that schools have installed net price calculators on their web sites. Today I’m sharing the results from a mom (Lynne) who has used the net price...

August 15, 2012

How do you evaluate a college’s learning disability services? In today’s blog post I’m sharing some questions that parents and students should ask when visiting a school (or contacting a disability office by phone.) Joy App, a college consultant in Houston, who was my source for yesterday’s post on learning disabilities, provided the questions that you’ll see below. Like other...

August 12, 2012

Does your teenager have a learning disability? If so, the whole college process might seem even more daunting. With these parents in mind, I recently talked with Joy App, a college consultant in Houston, who has worked with many teenagers with learning disabilities. I am passing along some of her advice for parents of learning disabled teenagers. To start, I’m...

August 9, 2012

The unrelenting cost of college is hitting upper-middle-class families hard. According to a front-page analysis today in The Wall Street Journal, it’s these families who are experiencing the largest rise in college-loan debt. In its analysis, the newspaper categorized upper-middle-income as households with yearly incomes in the 80th to 90th percentiles that range from $94,000 to $205,000. Among families with...