The College Solutions Blog

August 24, 2011

I wrote yesterday about the hazards of attending high-priced private colleges and universities that can’t support their students with solid financial aid packages. If you missed the post, here it is: Attending Expensive East Coast Universities I think one reason why students gravitate to pricey schools on the East Coast is because they don’t put much effort into finding wonderful...

August 23, 2011

While I was in New York last week, I spent some time with families of students interested in majoring in the performing arts. The parents shared the same anxieties as the moms and dads of other college-bound teenagers. They wondered how they would pay for college. And the kids seemed preoccupied about how they could manage to sing or dance...

August 22, 2011

On Friday I was one of the guests on The Early Show on CBS talking about who should be responsible for paying for college — students or parents. Obviously, the answer for most families is both parents and students. So the CBS segment didn’t break any new ground nor was it particularly illuminating, but it was great to be on...

August 19, 2011

How do you cut the cost of college? The best way to shrink college costs is to be an educated consumer. If money is an issue – and it almost always is – you need to evaluate schools to determine which ones are generous and which are stingy. Here are 10 ways that can help you shave significant dollars off...

August 18, 2011

If anybody is interested in checking out a webinar that I did earlier this week on shrinking the cost of college — a favorite topic of mine — you can watch it now. I pulled together the webinar for Kaplan Test Prep and it was free and open to the public. I spoke for about 45 minutes on these sorts...

August 17, 2011

How do you contact a college? I decided to write about this today because I’m helping a great young man named Tyrone in St. Louis navigate his college choices. He will be the first person in his family to attend college so I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t know how to reach out to colleges.  I’ve talked to many students...

August 16, 2011

Is your family going to qualify for financial aid? Many families I talk to assume that they won’t qualify for financial aid. Why are so many parents pessimistic about their chances for financial assistance? I think a lot of them assume that the money they’ve squirreled away in their college savings accounts will kill their chances. I find it ironic...

August 15, 2011

I think the most misconceptions that people have about the college process revolve around financial aid. With the college admission season about to head into high gear, today I want to share the four financial aid myths that are probably the most common. Here are four of the most stubborn financial aid myths. 1. I make too much money to...

August 12, 2011

I’m going to be in New York next week giving a couple of presentations open to the general public on behalf of Halley Shefler, the founder of The Arts Edge, a college consulting firm that works with students who want to major in music, theater, arts and dance. I first talked with Halley, who is the former dean of admissions...

August 11, 2011

Some things about college are easy to measure. It’s easy to determine the win-loss record of the football or basketball teams. It’s easy to find out how many kids graduate in four years. (Nationally only about 35% pull this off.) It’s easy to determine if the campus is pretty or if the dorm food sucks. It’s awfully hard, however, to...