The College Solutions Blog

Valuable insights from Lynn O’Shaughnessy
a nationally recognized college expert.

8 Tips for Taking the College Plunge

It’s decision time for high school seniors who typically have until May 1 to decide where they’re going to attend college in the fall. Recognizing it’s crunch time, someone at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA, sent me a list of eight tips that Suzanne Holland, an ethics and religion professor at the liberal arts college, compiled. Most...

Demonstrating College Love

I received an email from a high school junior in San Diego today that prompted me to write this post. The teenager came to hear me talk last night at a presentation hosted by a financial adviser. At one point I mentioned that one in five colleges say that an applicant’s demonstrated interest is very important in their admission decisions....

17 Ways to Reduce Your Dependence on College Loans

How can reduce your dependence on college loans? Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of FinAid and FastWeb, sent me this article today that includes his suggestions on how families can reduce their dependence on college loans. I couldn’t resist adding some links to college blog posts that I’ve written on the same topics. Here is Mark’s advice: 1. Borrow less for...

The True Cost of a Borrowing for College

Most families haven’t saved enough to pay the full college tab, which can lead to some uncomfortable conversations about how much college debt parents should assume versus their children. It can be hard, however, to get a true picture of how onerous that debt will be for parents and their children in the future. There is a free online tool...

Finishing Year One at a Liberal Arts College

I got an opportunity to visit my son Ben this weekend at Beloit College in Wisconsin and I was surprised about what he wanted to talk about when we met up for dinner. Moral relativism. Ben has been studying moral relativism in his philosophy class and he finds the concept intriguing. Over a meal of tacos and burritos (truly dreadful...

When You Don’t Have Enough Money for College

I’ve had a lot of parents asking me lately about whether they should give the green light to their children, who have been accepted into expensive schools without enough financial aid. In response, I want to share a cautionary post that I wrote for my other college blog over at CBS MoneyWatch. Here is part of that post: Here is...

Should This Teenager Go to Penn?

I received an email this week from a dad, whose daughter is weighing three college choices. Here they are: University of Texas at Austin University of Texas at Dallas University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School The dad explained to me that his daughter had won a full-ride scholarship to both Texas schools. The Penn degree would not be free. After subtracting...

Need a Tutor?

I stopped being able to help my kids with their math homework in middle school. I know there are millions of parents whose children can no longer rely on them to help with math, chemistry, physics or other complex subjects. When this happens, tutors are always an option, but that can be expensive. So what’s an alternative? I’d suggest using...

Financial Aid and Divorce

In the financial aid process, many schools treat students with divorced parents differently. As someone who has been married for more than 26 years, I don’t think this is always fair, but it’s the reality. Today I’m going to illustrate how schools can treat families of divorce differently by using the story of a girl, who I’ll call Sophia. Sophia...

Grinnell College: A College Admission Success Story

In recent days I’ve been hearing from all sorts of people – strangers, friends and acquaintances – about their college admission successes and failures. It’s been fascinating to hear the experiences of teenagers who have now received all their college acceptances. In general, the teenagers who created an unrealistic list of colleges, otherwise known as reach schools, now have far...