The College Solutions Blog

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

Academic quality

My Pet Peeve: Picking Colleges By Size

Here’s one of my biggest pet peeves about how teenagers look for colleges: When teenagers put together a list of potential colleges, a campus size requirement is often way up at the top of their criteria. I want to go to a big school. I don’t want to go to small school. I’m interested in a medium-sized school. Hardly anyone...

A Homeschooler and College Controversy

In my last college blog post for CBSMoneyWatch.com, I wrote about a study that explored how homeschoolers do in college. Here is the link: Can Homeschoolers Do Well in College? I was surprised at the passionate responses that the homeschooler piece triggered. The homeschool supporters seemed especially incensed that I brought up what I perceive as a common belief about...

30 Liberal Arts Colleges In or Near Cities

I’ve talked to a lot of teenagers, who are interested in liberal arts colleges as long as they are in cities or at least close to metropolitan areas. Unfortunately for these kids, many liberal arts colleges are in rural areas. My daughter Caitlin is fully aware of this reality because she attends Juniata College, in Huntingdon, PA, which is a...

11 Great Colleges – Mostly Off the Beaten Path

What do the University of Notre Dame and Raritan Valley Community College have in common? They both made the short list of great colleges that are doing an exceptionally good jobs. The list was complied by Andrew Hacker, a professor at Queens College and Claudia Dreifus, a New York Times writer, who are the authors of How Colleges are Wasting...

Choosing Colleges: 5 Things You Must Do

Need help in choosing colleges? It so, you’ll be interested in this college blog post by David Montesano. David is an admission strategist with College Match, an educational consulting firm that aims to help families find great colleges at discount prices. Here are 5 things that David suggests that you keep in mind when when are looking for college matches:...

Top 10 Best College Websites

What are the best college websites in the country? I tried to answer that question earlier this week when I wrote my first college blog post for US News & World Report. In the post, I nominated my own favorite college websites which can be invaluable for finding colleges, researching schools, pinpointing the generosity of individual colleges and learning about...

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...

Avoiding Part-Time Professors

When you are researching colleges, be sure to ask this question: What percentage of professors are part time? At many schools, the percentage is going to be high. I’ll explain why you should care in a minute, but first here are some startling statistics from the Association of American Colleges and Universities about tenured professors: Tenured college professors now represent...

How Many Hours Does It Take to Research Colleges?

Zillow, where you can find out how much your house is worth, has released a survey that suggests that Americans only spend five hours researching mortgages. That’s the same amount of time that Americans spend planning vacations. It’s significantly less time than the 10 hours that consumers devote to buying a car, which is obviously a much smaller purchase. That...

Funny Stories from Studying Abroad

I’m a big believer in students studying abroad for a semester in college. My daughter Caitlin is one of the rare students who studied overseas for an entire school year. If I’m remembering correctly, only 5% of college students who study overseas stay for a year. Caitlin studied at the University of Barcelona. I think living in Barcelona was a...