The College Solutions Blog

A month after he graduated from Beloit College with a degree in mathematics, my son Ben is taking his first step towards becoming a high school math teacher. He starts his Denver Teacher Residency program Monday through a collaborative effort between the University of Denver and the Denver Public Schools. Ben will be taking classes for the next year at...

I’ve always felt that parents and teenagers spend too much time worrying about getting into college. I wish teenagers, in particular, diverted some of their energy into making sure that their college years will be successful. For everybody who agrees with me that the latter goal is vastly more important, I want to recommend a book, The Thinking Student’s Guide...

My son Ben graduated from Beloit College on Sunday. With 277 other seniors, Ben received his diploma on a beautiful spring day at this liberal arts college in Beloit, WI, which he considered his home for four years. This native San Diegan left nearly four years ago to move to a state where he had no connections, no relatives, no...

Today I’m sharing a guest post that explains some excellent, but overlooked options for students who are interested in attending a music conservatory or an art and design school, which are often extremely expensive options with poor financial aid. The author is Stuart Nachbar, who is president of EducatedQuest.com, a college admissions blog and guide to some of the best...

A new survey conducted by Gallup and Purdue University indicates that the type of institution that college graduates attend matters less to their future happiness at home and work than the experiences they have in college. I felt vindicated when I saw the Gallup results because I’ve been saying for years that what’s most important is not where you go...

A new Gallup survey that polled business leaders on higher-education issues revealed that executives hold a low opinion of the ability of colleges to prepare students for the workplace. American adults also  believe just as strongly that higher-ed institutions are not readying students for employment. According to the survey, which was conducted in partnership with the Lumina Foundation, only 11%...

Teenagers often pick college major without knowing much  about what they entail or whether they can handle the work. I was thinking about this today when I read a new report from ACT Inc., entitled, The Condition of STEM 2013. The report shared statistics on the number of high school students in the 2013 graduating class, who were interested in...

Is your child interested in picking a college major based on those ubiquitous lists of the country’s highest-paying college degrees? Plenty of students are pursuing degrees that they perceive will generate the biggest salaries. I assume that’s why business is the most popular major – more than one out of every five students select it. I can’t resist mentioning that...

The Association of American Colleges and Universities released a report yesterday that suggests that by their peak earning years, college graduates who majored in the liberal arts are earning higher salaries, on average, than students who studied in professional and pre-professional fields such as nursing and business. I wanted to share the study, which relied upon data from the U.S....

When I talked to my son Ben yesterday, he was dreading next week when he had exams, a paper and a presentation due.  It was the same story when my nephew called to chat. With so many students taking finals in the coming days, I thought I’d rerun an old post about how students can boost their chances of doing...