The College Solutions Blog

April 21, 2009

Just thinking about what it takes to get into college today can be exhausting.  High school kids are supposed to take challenging classes, study for the dreaded SAT/ACT, round up teacher recommendation, complete applications, nag their parents to fill out financial aid forms ….it never seems to end. But today was a triumph for the two seniors who ride in...

April 18, 2009

When I was in college I owned a fake ID. One of my friends, who  worked at the DMV in St. Louis, gave it to me as a birthday present. So I wasn’t exactly a prude in college though I don’t remember ever making a fool of myself at a kegger. But now that I’m a mom with two teenagers,...

April 15, 2009

Yesterday I hung out at San Diego’s largest annual college fair. If you want to attend one of these mega college fairs, the National Association for College Admission Counseling has posted its list of spring college fairs  on its website. Here’s where you can find fall college fairs. Spending the morning at the San Diego college fair reminded of the...

April 3, 2009

On a lark, I decided to attend a conference being held this week in San Diego that is focused on improving the lives of professors.  Understandably this is not a subject that worries families, who are too freaked out about paying for college. The conference, which was sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, brought together heavy-hitter speakers,...

March 6, 2009

For many wannabe investment bankers, the key to unlocking Wall Street’s treasure chest was traditionally getting a Harvard MBA. So this shouldn’t come as a surprise:  Harvard tops the list of business school that have produced the most Wall Street scoundrels in our current financial mess. Here are the top three winners: Harvard New York University Cornell University Do business...

February 28, 2009

Earlier this month I wrote a blog post that shared a wild story about my son’s precalculus teacher. When the teacher said no late assignments, he meant it. A cancer patient who was taking his class nearly died from the wrong dose of chemotherapy, but the teacher still wouldn’t accept her late paper. I think there are many more teachers...

January 22, 2009

This is an exciting and nerve wracking time of year for high school seniors as they contemplate getting acceptance packages in the mail. Before making their final decisions, however, high schoolers should examine the freshmen retention rates of the colleges and universities remaining on their list. They should be extremely leery if any of their favorites has experienced a mass...

January 15, 2009

Underclassmen have been attending classes at universities the same way for generations. Students plunk down in a large lecture hall and listen (sometimes) to the professor droning up on a stage. The difference for today’s students is that increasingly it’s difficult to fall asleep during these lectures because the halls are often so jammed that stragglers have to stand in...

November 22, 2008

The University of California has been living on a starvation diet for a long time. For the past 18 years, state support for the campuses has dropped 40% and now Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed draconian mid-year cuts. In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle today, Stanton Glantz, a prominent UC professor, had this to say: I think what...

October 7, 2008

I promised in my last blog that I would devote my next one to learning communities. So I called my nephew Kevin O’Shaughnessy tonight before the presidential debate got started. I wanted to talk to Kevin, who is a freshman at the University of Missouri, about his learning community. Mizzou, as well as an increasing number of schools across the...