The College Solutions Blog

January 20, 2017

During the past week, I shared Five Winning College Strategies during a webinar that attracted more than 1,000 viewers. If you missed the webinar, which I offered on four different dates, you can still listen to the replay for a limited time period. Here is the link to Five Winning College Strategies to Finding Great Schools and Cutting Their Price....

January 11, 2017

College price tags are meaningless. Most students do not pay full tuition price for college. That said, paying attention to college prices can be extremely helpful in making college more affordable. Here’s a simple example: Getting a $20,000-a-year merit scholarship from a school that has a published price of $48,000 will obviously make a college much more affordable than receiving...

January 1, 2017

What happens if your child recently received a college admission deferral letter? Plenty of students, who applied to schools via early action and early decision applications, have received deferral notices. Students need to understand that a deferral doesn’t mean that their hopes have been dashed. It signifies that a school has not decided whether to accept or reject the applicant...

December 19, 2016

If your child will be heading to college next fall, you should be tackling the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and, if applicable, the CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE now. While filing for financial aid is extremely important, it is incredibly easy to make mistakes which can hurt your family’s ultimate awards. In this post, I’m sharing 11 FAFSA mistakes to...

November 27, 2016

High-achieving students who apply every year to the Ivies and other elites schools have heard the grim statistics about how ridiculously hard it is to get into these schools. That reality, however, doesn’t deter students from applying even though the chances for most smart students is ZERO percent. Ambitious teenagers aiming to attend the nearly impregnable schools at the top...

November 11, 2016

Today I’m happy to share a guest blog post by Michelle Kretzschmar, who is the creator of an incredibly helpful website called DIYCollegeRankings. If you’re looking for colleges and wondering how you’re going to pay for them, I’d urge you to visit Michelle’s website! Lynn O’Shaughnessy By Michelle Kretzschmar Many people don’t know how much they’ve borrowed from college until...

October 28, 2016

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 apply early decision, they promise that they will attend if the institution accepts them. A student accepted via early decision must withdraw all other college applications. Early Decision Gamble Students must...

October 23, 2016

I wrote this post last year, but wanted to share it again because the messages are equally relevant today!  Lynn O’Shaughnessy Plenty of parents, who enroll in my online course – The College Cost Lab –  are affluent and highly educated. Quite a few of these moms and dads would like to see their children attend elite schools. Not surprisingly,...

October 13, 2016

Big financial aid changes have arrived for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and the CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE. If you’re hoping that your child qualifies for financial aid, you need to know what these major new developments that kicked off this month. Millions of parents annually fill out the FAFSA. Completing this aid application is necessary to qualify for...

October 3, 2016

Are you stressing about what your teenager’s college major is going to be? If you’re worried about your child not picking the right college major, you must ABSOLUTELY watch the video and read the blog post below! In the video I interview Jane Horowitz, who is a phenomenal career-launch coach for college students and new college grads and the founder...