The College Solutions Blog

November 4, 2011

I got an email this week from a California mother who was happy that her child would be a attending St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a wonderful public liberal arts college, in the fall. Her husband, however, remained skeptical. He worried that his daughter would be jeopardizing her chances of going to graduate school if she went to an obscure...

November 3, 2011

Student loan debt is at its highest level ever. That’s the conclusion of a new report released on Thursday by The Project on Student Debt. Two thirds of students in the class of 2010 graduated with college debt that averaged $25,250, which is the highest it’s ever been. Students mostly borrowed through federal loans, but at least 22% of the...

November 2, 2011

I received an email from a high school junior in San Diego recently that prompted me to write this post. The teenager attended one of my talks and heard me mention that one in five colleges say that an applicant’s demonstrated interest is very important in their admission decisions. So what does demonstrated interest mean? Basically I told the teenager...

November 1, 2011

Today I want to share a nifty interactive tool on The Chronicle of Higher Education’s  website that you can use to see where students, who attend any college or university, are coming from. When I used it to look up the the University of Michigan, I discovered that the biggest contingent of nonresidents were from New York (361), Illinois (319),...

October 31, 2011

Do you need to graduate from an Ivy League school or other ultra elite college to earn the highest salaries? Many families believe that graduates who can put Princeton or Yale on their resume will fare significantly better financially than smart students who end up earning their degrees from elsewhere. In a famous study, two economists tackled this question about...

October 28, 2011

Most of the teenagers who visit my college blog aren’t thinking yet about how they are going to come up with the cash to pay off any future student loans. High school students and their parents are more focused on getting into good schools. I don’t blame them, but payback time is inevitable. And that’s when it’s going to get...

October 27, 2011

Interested in finding out what the most expensive colleges and universities in the nation are? I wrote a post for my college blog over at CBS MoneyWatch today that listed the top 25 price offenders. I’m patching in the list below. Not surprisingly, most of the priciest schools are located on the East Coast. Why Should We Care? I’m going...

October 26, 2011

Last night my nephew Matt sent me his college essay to check out. We had talked a couple of weeks ago about what might make a compelling topic. I told Matt that he needed to write an essay that conveyed in vivid detail what kind of teenager he is. You can write a college essay that’s humorous, reflective, inspiring…it doesn’t...

October 25, 2011

I’m sharing an email that I received over the weekend from an anxious dad in North Carolina, who asked me for advice about an early decision application. I’ve changed the name of the son. Here is what he wrote: Dilemma from a Dad from North Carolina My son, Andrew, would like to go to Davidson College here in North Carolina;...

October 24, 2011

Is affirmative action on its way out on college campuses? While higher-ed affirmative action policies have been debated for decades, they could now be in jeopardy. Why? Because it’s highly likely that a case filed by Abigail Fisher, a young white woman, who was rejected as an applicant at the University of Texas at Austin in 2008, ends up being...