The College Solutions Blog

September 28, 2011

College Admissions: The Rich Kid Advantage A new ambitious survey of hundreds of senior college admission officials from across the country has revealed just what kind of high school students are in big demand:  R-I-C-H kids. It’s no surprise that admission officers at both public and private colleges and universities are salivating over wealthy teenagers. Their parents have the money...

September 20, 2011

I received an email yesterday from a friend of mine whose son is a brilliant high school senior. She wanted to know what they should think about invitations her son has received to apply to colleges through VIP or priority applications. Here is her question: My son has received approximately 10+ email/print invitations from schools to complete their priority applications....

September 14, 2011

Do you have to visit a college before you apply? It’s always better if you arrange a college tour and spend quality time at schools before finalizing your list, but financially it’s often not possible. There are things you can do, however, to help you assess whether a college would be a great match while at the same time letting...

September 8, 2011

If you missed it, I wrote a post earlier in the week about applying early decision to colleges: The Odds of Applying Early Decision I assumed this post would lead to more questions on this issue and sure enough I got an email from a mom with a question that I thought was worth sharing with you. Here is what...

September 7, 2011

For many years I was a financial journalist and in that role I became extremely cynical about how Wall Street and the rest of the financial industry operated. After I switched  to writing about the higher-ed world, I became just as cynical about the practices of colleges and universities. I bring this up today because of a report just released...

September 6, 2011

Should you apply early decision to your favorite college or university? I know fall has arrived because I’ve started receiving questions about early decision. I’ll be addressing early decision and early action issues in the coming weeks, but I wanted to answer a question that I received today from a mother, who heard me give a talk recently in Southern...

August 30, 2011

I’m sharing a piece about the current college admission climate that was written by Dean P. Skarlis, who  is president of The College Advisor of New York in Albany.The Washington Post originally carried the piece and he agreed that I could share it with my readers. Admission Secrets Revealed According to the The Chronicle of Higher Education, there now are...

August 18, 2011

If anybody is interested in checking out a webinar that I did earlier this week on shrinking the cost of college — a favorite topic of mine — you can watch it now. I pulled together the webinar for Kaplan Test Prep and it was free and open to the public. I spoke for about 45 minutes on these sorts...

August 17, 2011

How do you contact a college? I decided to write about this today because I’m helping a great young man named Tyrone in St. Louis navigate his college choices. He will be the first person in his family to attend college so I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t know how to reach out to colleges.  I’ve talked to many students...

August 12, 2011

I’m going to be in New York next week giving a couple of presentations open to the general public on behalf of Halley Shefler, the founder of The Arts Edge, a college consulting firm that works with students who want to major in music, theater, arts and dance. I first talked with Halley, who is the former dean of admissions...