The College Solutions Blog

October 17, 2011

I want to major in art. This is the college major that perhaps more than any other strikes fear in the hearts of parents, who worry that an art degree will condemn their children to a life eating Cheerio’s for dinner and driving old subcompacts with bald tires. The truth is there are a myriad of careers in a wide...

September 19, 2011

Parents always seem relieved when their children decide to major in something practical like business, which is the most popular major in America. While students can succeed in life regardless of their major, families often don’t take that argument seriously. I was thinking about this over the weekend when my husband and I were visiting our son, a sophomore at...

September 1, 2011

Is anybody else out there concerned about the popularity of vocational college degrees? I’m talking about degrees like sports management, film production, park & recreation, information technology, homeland security and communications. And, of course, the biggest vocational major of all – business. Vocational degrees have always been around. Until the mid 1960s, there was a balance between vocational degrees and...

August 31, 2011

Before my son Ben left to start his sophomore year at Beloit College, we talked about the advice in a chapter of The Thinking Student’s Guide to College: 75 Tips for Getting a Better Education. I’ve mentioned before how much I love this book and I think every college-bound student should read it. Andrew Roberts, an assistant professor of political...

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...

August 8, 2011

I got an email yesterday from a mom whose teenage daughter wants to become a registered nurse. The mother wanted to know how her daughter could find a list of colleges and universities that offer nursing degrees. This is a great question and the answer is relevant to anybody who wants to cast a wider net when looking for colleges....

July 21, 2011

Interested in some summer reading? I’ve got bookcases packed with college books in my home office. In this YouTube video, however, I share some of my favorite books about college. College Workshop I’ll be giving the final college workshop this Saturday (July 23) in a summer series for parents and teenagers at the University of California, San Diego. If you’d...

July 13, 2011

This is my third post on college majors and my last for awhile on this topic. I promise. If you missed my previous posts, here they are: 5 Tips on Choosing a College Major Stressing About College Majors The Scottish Way of Choosing Majors Is getting a head start on a college major a good thing? Not according to a...

July 12, 2011

How do you choose a college major? I explored that question yesterday. If you missed it, here’s the link: Stressing About College Majors Today I want to share some five tips on selecting a college major: 1. Rethink a business major. Business is the most popular major in the country, but don’t assume that you have to major in business...

July 11, 2011

  Stressing About College Majors Last spring I bumped into a dad I know whose daughter had attended the same middle school as my son. I asked him where his daughter would be attending college in the fall and he said: She’s going to a community college. I was surprised because Rachel is a very bright girl. The dad explained,...