The College Solutions Blog

March 2, 2020

Here’s a super quick way to cut your college costs:  Deposit money into a 529 account for  just 24 hours. After putting money into a 529 account, you can quickly turn around and withdraw the cash to pay for your child’s college tuition and other qualified expenses. In most states, you can claim a state tax deduction – or even...

February 14, 2020

Before you let your teenager apply to colleges, you need to use each college’s net price calculator. Unless money is no object and you can afford to pay full price for any colleges, turning to net price calculators is critical. If you don’t know what these calculators are – and most parents don’t – here are 10 things you need...

January 13, 2020

Financial aid awards are often confusing. Plenty of colleges and universities intentionally make financial aid awards hard to decipher to trick families into thinking that their institutions are being generous even when they aren’t. Obfuscation is an effective way to keep parents from effectively evaluating a financial aid award. Since we are in the season of financial aid letters, I...

October 14, 2019

Should your child apply early decision to college? This is the time of year when high school seniors aiming for more selective to elite colleges and universities must decide if they will apply early decision. When students submit an early decision application, they promise that they will attend if the institution accepts them. A student accepted via early decision must...

August 16, 2019

Should you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to send your child to his or her dream college? My answer to that dream college question has always been a resounding NO! Some of the universities that U.S. News & World Report loves to gush over now cost $300,000 or higher. And that’s for a SINGLE bachelor’s degree. If you’re really...

May 2, 2019

At many colleges, May 1, officially known as College Decision Day or College Signing Day, is an illusion. The majority of colleges are failing to fill their freshmen class by May 1, which is supposed to be the drop-dead date for high school seniors to plunk down their deposit for the college they will attend in the fall. Because many...

April 6, 2019

The college admission season is winding down at this time of year except for this part: Parents are stressing about how they’re going to pay for the college that their children want to attend. Spring is when I hear from parents who are being guilted by their children to spend dangerously more than they should for a brand name research...

March 15, 2019

The college admission scandal that saturated the press this week made me think of a disturbing anecdote, which I heard last month, that blew my mind. I want to emphasize that shocking me is tough to do since covering the higher-ed industry – and it is very much an industry – has made me quite cynical and disgusted about how...

January 17, 2019

How do you appeal a financial aid letter? Should you appeal a financial aid award? What kind of college awards can you appeal? I directed these financial aid questions to Mark Kantrowitz, a nationally recognized financial aid expert, who has just published a book entitled, How to Appeal for More Financial Aid Awards. Mark is publisher and VP of research...

January 8, 2019

Does your child need to attend an Ivy League college or other elite university to end up getting great jobs with great salaries? The answer is… No. No! Noooo! NOOOO! Got It? At the risk of being obnoxious, I repeated my answer because the parents, who are most likely to obsess about Ivy League colleges or other elite universities, are...