The College Solutions Blog

June 15, 2017

I am a huge supporter of families throwing a wider net when looking for colleges. I’m not going to lie, however, I do get push back from skeptical parents. Here is one of the questions that I hear from these folks: What if a promising college is on the verge of going belly up? Even though it’s rarely going to...

April 24, 2017

Will your child end up going to his or her dream school? The odds are that your child won’t if the college or university is a rankings alpha dog. And that’s especially true if you don’t enjoy a powerful hook such as being a celebrity or a one-percenter kid, a legacy or an athlete. The story I’m sharing today is...

March 13, 2017

If you like periodically checking out my college blog, I want to alert you to another place where I share my thoughts about college issues. I recently began a college column at Cappex, which is the popular resource for students and parents researching colleges and looking for scholarships. Here is the link to the archive of my new Cappex column...

February 13, 2017

Most students who hope to earn a bachelor’s degree will enroll at a university. The schools that students dream of attending are almost always research universities. It’s far less common for teenagers to end up at a college. I find that reality unfortunate because a college can often provide a better education for undergraduates than a research university. And it’s...

October 23, 2016

I wrote this post last year, but wanted to share it again because the messages are equally relevant today!  Lynn O’Shaughnessy Plenty of parents, who enroll in my online course – The College Cost Lab –  are affluent and highly educated. Quite a few of these moms and dads would like to see their children attend elite schools. Not surprisingly,...

June 14, 2016

How do you know if the colleges or universities that your child is looking at 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...

May 9, 2016

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

April 25, 2016

When researching colleges, many families gravitate to what they call “great schools” without having any idea of whether these institutions merit their reputations. In reality, no college or university is a monolithic entity that is uniformly excellent, average or mediocre. That’s why just picking schools by relying on general impressions, U.S. News’ actual rankings or a campus tour won’t be...

April 18, 2016

When searching for schools, parents are increasingly asking admission reps this question: Will my child earn a good salary after graduating from your college? College and university admission staffs will enthusiastically answer yes (!!!) to that question, but proof is almost always flimsy at best. Schools typically brag about high job placement statistics for their graduates because they rely on job surveys of...

April 5, 2016

I’ll be launching my latest online course – The College Cost Lab – in June. If you’d like to be among the first to know when I have more details,  just email me at Lynn@TheCollegeSolution.com. Lynn O’Shaughnessy In my last post, I wrote about smart teenagers who worked hard to get into elite schools only to have their dream schools...