The College Solutions Blog

December 29, 2009

What happens if your teenagers has made a bad mistake during his or her high school years? I’m talking about a suspension from school. A drunk driving ticket. A cheating incident. How do you handle these kinds of mistakes on your college application? Lee Bierer, an independent college counselor in Charlotte, NC, and a syndicated columnist, tackled this thorny college...

December 27, 2009

Which universities spend more on sports than classroom instruction?  In my latest college blog post for CBSMoneyWatch, I shared the list of the Division 1-A schools that spend the greatest percentage of its revenue on sports. On the list, you’ll find the top 10 college sports cash hogs, as well as the 10 schools that spend the smallest percentage of...

December 21, 2009

Here’s a college admission success story that’s going to make you jealous. Yale University just accepted four teenagers from the same Connecticut family for its next freshmen class. This is the first time in anyone’s memory that Yale has accepted quadruplets. The New York Times wrote about this stunning feat over the weekend. This wasn’t some sort of gimmick. Yale’s...

December 17, 2009

Want to know what college admission officers are really thinking? The Wall Street Journal and Unigo managed to get admission deans from eight prestigious schools, including Bryn Mawr College, Grinnell College,  Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania and Weslyan University to parpticipate in a panel discussion that touched on many issues that are relevant to collegebound teenagers. You can watch the...

December 14, 2009

This is the time of year when high school teachers and counselors are flooded with requests to write college recommendation letters. Writing a college recommendation letter is a thankless job and I’m glad that I’ll never have to write one. But that doesn’t mean that I’m off the hook.  My role in the college recommendation process is to make sure...

December 13, 2009

Want to get into Harvard? Consider taking a gap year. It’s not easy getting into Havard or other elite schools, but some high school seniors manage to get into their dream schools by taking the year off and pursuing other interests through a gap year program here or overseas. I wrote about gap years experiences last week for my college...

December 2, 2009

Thousands of California high school seniors are panicking right now because they’re worried that they won’t be attending a California State University campus in the fall. The Cal State system happens to be the largest in the country. In fact, the number of students attending the 23 Cal State campuses exceeds the number of people living in Kansas City or...

December 1, 2009

Will colleges hand out more college scholarships and financial aid for the latest crop of high school seniors? Last year private colleges and universities, in particular, dug deeper and increased the amount of money they awarded through college financial aid and merit scholarships. Last time I checked, the financial misery index is still alarming, but colleges might not be as...

November 25, 2009

This year a lot more high school students seem to be  seeking early college admission decisions. According to anecdotal numbers gathered by Inside Higher Ed, the number of students applying early decision to elite and selective colleges and universities has risen. Early decision applications at Duke University, for instance, jumped 32% from last year and they have increased 24% at...

November 13, 2009

I’ve been volunteering at my son Ben’s high school this semester so I’ve been sitting in on some presentations by visiting college admission reps. As they are packing up, I often ask the reps about their admission requirements for minority students since there are a significant number of these kids at Ben’s school. What I’ve discovered is that the college...