The College Solutions Blog

November 28, 2022

What is the difference between a college and a university? I have always found it depressing and frustrating that few parents and teenagers know what the differences are between a college and university. And the differences are substantial. Americans use the terms college and university interchangeably, but these two types of higher-education institutions are quite different. Families who understand how...

September 20, 2022

College degrees cost too much to ignore the return on investment (ROI) for colleges on your list, as well as the ROI for a particular academic college major. Luckily, a handful of resources, which rely on federal data, can help you pinpoint the ROI for not only specific colleges, but also academic majors within particular schools. Return on Investment (ROI)...

December 8, 2020

Using  a college admission checklist is critical when your child is applying to colleges and universities. Allowing  a teenager to apply to any colleges without a solid game plan can be a financial and academic disaster. In fact, ignoring advance planning is one reason why ONE OUT OF THREE students who start at four-year public and private colleges and universities...

July 6, 2020

Colleges have been running out of time to release their final plans for the start of the fall school year. Higher-ed observers assumed that colleges would have to start revealing their final plans sometime in July. Problem was, the vast majority of schools didn’t want to go first. A Midwestern college, for instance, would be loath to announce it was...

June 24, 2020

Most  college-bound teenagers and their parents never look at U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings, which is actually a healthy thing. U.S. News’ college rankings, are much more likely to be a preoccupation of teenagers and parents in affluent households.  I believe the fixation with the rankings is a major reason for the tremendous stress and mental health issues...

April 13, 2020

I’ve gotten questions recently about how to research colleges during the COVID-19 pandemic when you can’t visit campuses. I talked to a mom from Seattle over the weekend, whose daughter was choosing between seven colleges that stretch from the state of Washington to New Jersey. With merit scholarships deducted, the cost of all these schools for the Seattle family were...

April 8, 2020

This is an incredibly stressful time for families who have to navigate college admissions during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a practical matter, this (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime experience has generated a great deal of college questions from anxious students, parents, educational consultants and high school counselors. Some answers are known. We know, for instance, that the Advanced Placement tests, with a radically...

May 8, 2018

While U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings are wildly popular, few families know much about how they are created. Before you place too much faith in U.S. News’ college rankings, here are 15 things that you should know about them. 1. U.S. News relies on rankings to stay alive. U.S. News’ college rankings wields tremendous power even though the...

April 2, 2018

When building a college list, it’s critical to check college graduation rates. Paying for college is hard enough without adding a fifth or six year to the tab! And yet most students do not graduate from college in four years. Many parents whom I’ve talked to over the years seem shocked by this reality.  It is understandable since schools with...

August 14, 2017

How do you know if the colleges that interest your teenager would provide him or her with an excellent education? You won’t. College pricing is inching closer to transparency thanks to net price calculators and other tools,  but it’s difficult to form an educated opinion about the strength of a school’s learning environment. Evaluating an Institution’s Professors To get a...