The College Solutions Blog

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

How to Win a Sports Scholarship

Last month I wrote three college blog posts about the hazards of chasing sports scholarships. I promise I’m not going to rehash that, but I did want to share a post that I wrote for CBSMoneyWatch on how teenagers can increase your chances of a sports scholarship. At a college admission conference that I attended last week in San Francisco,...

Censoring Financial Aid Information

With about 800 other people, I’ve been spending the last couple of days at the WACAC conference at the University of San Francisco. WACAC stands for the Western Association for College Admission Counseling. I gave a speech on shrinking the cost of college — one of my favorite topics — at the educational conference that attracts high school and independent...

Top 50 Colleges That Produce Science PhD's

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...

Putting Your College Debt On Hold

I got an email this week from Sharon, a mom who is distraught about her son’s college debt. She was hoping that I had an idea about how he can tackle this debt when he is only working part-time. I did have a suggestion on how the young college grad can reduce his student debt burden. I thought it would...

529 Plans: Investing at the Last Minute

Are 529 plans only for younger children? The answer is absolutely not! I think a lot of parents with college-bound teenagers, however, assume that their days of contributing to a 529 plan is over. By this time, parents are beginning to drain their 529 plan. You could save a bundle in taxes, however, if you continue to contribute to a...

A Law Professor's Take on College Admissions

Does anybody else use Google Alert to see what other people are saying about you? I confess I do. I have Google alert me if someone mentions me or my college blogs on the Internet. And that’s how I stumbled across a post written by Tom Smith, a law professor, at a blog called, The Right Coast: Thoughts from San...

UC Admissions: 7 Facts You Need to Know

The University of California’s admission practices generated a lot of angst and speculation in recent months, which led to a lot of curiosity about how the UC schools would handle the the latest crush of college applications with money tighter than ever. Now that the most recent UC admission season is history, here are 7 facts about who got in...

Shrinking the Cost of College: Twitter Chat Tonight

If you’d like to learn more about shrinking the cost of college, I’ll be sharing advice on the first edition of #CollegeChat at 6 p.m. PST tonight on Twitter. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to find this one-hour college Twitter chat. You can find the instructions at the bottom of this post. During the live Twitter chat, I...

New York University: Tale of 2 Students

Today I’m going to use New York University as a punching bag. I’m going to use NYU to illustrate how too many well-meaning families muddle through the college process and end up looking for the most highly ranked colleges without considering the price. Some of these families end up like Cortney Munna, a 26-year-old woman, who is facing nearly $100,000...

Financial Aid: How to Find Out If You Qualify

Today I want to share one of the many financial aid questions that I tackle in my new eBook, Shrinking the Cost of College: 152 Ways to Cut the Cost of a Bachelor’s Degree. This question happens to be one that I believe most families worry about: How do you know if you will qualify for financial aid? Here are...