The College Solutions Blog

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

Academics

Living in an Empty Nest: Parents' Biggest Fears

If you’re going to be living in an empty nest soon, this column is for you. I’ll officially be an empty nester next month when my son heads off the college. My daughter is already back in college. I wanted to share a column, written by Lee Bierer, an independent college counselor and a syndicated columnist, about facing the prospects...

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...

Is Getting a Double Major a Dumb Idea?

A double major in college seems like a no brainer to many students today, who want to capture a competitive advantage in the work world. Some academics, however, argue that a double major doesn’t necessarily provide that edge. Even worse, double majoring keeps many students from graduating on time. The double major issue came up when I was talking to...

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:...

My Kids Are Growing Up

Saturday was a bittersweet day. My son Benjamin graduated from High Tech High. Ben received his diploma along with about 150 other seniors on the school’s lawn on a beautiful (naturally) morning in San Diego. High Tech High has never ranked students – that’s one of the things that I love about the school – so we didn’t have to...

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...

UC Admissions: 7 Facts You Need to Know

The University of California’s admission practices generated a lot of angst and speculation in recent months, which led to a lot of curiosity about how the UC schools would handle the the latest crush of college applications with money tighter than ever. Now that the most recent UC admission season is history, here are 7 facts about who got in...

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...

Who Isn't Graduating From College?

Should more high school graduates go to college? This question has been getting a lot of attention since President Obama announced that one of his prime education goals would be to get more Americans to attend college. That’s a laudable and ambitious goal. I worry, however, about students, who are unprepared for college. They often get entangled in a huge...