The College Solutions Blog

January 16, 2012

I met a teenage girl during the fall who was excited about applying to Hampshire College. She had visited the campus in Amherst, MA, had met professors and talked with students. She was smitten. She and her mother felt good that they had done their due diligence on the college, but then I asked them a question that drew a...

January 12, 2012

If you didn’t read my college blog post yesterday, I hope you do because it focused on a lot of hot-button issues for parents and teenagers trying to navigate the college process. The post, which was actually an email from the mom of a high school senior, touched upon such issues as: Brand name snob appeal Pushy relatives Mistrust of...

January 11, 2012

I received an email yesterday from a mom in Southern California, whose daughter Nicole is getting grief about the Southern universities that she has applied to.  Karen’s email raises a lot of interesting issues including preconceived notions about schools, the tendency of some parent(s) to push kids to attend their alma mater or state schools and a lack of understanding...

January 4, 2012

I’ve been writing posts for my college blog recently about the W-R-O-N-G way to assemble a college list. If you missed them, here are my the posts: Another Dreadful College List Applying to the Wrong Universities Assembling a solid list of schools to apply to is critically important, but I’d argue that the vast majority of teenagers do a lousy...

January 3, 2012

During the holidays, I wrote a post about a teenager, who has been applying to inappropriate universities. (At least in my opinion.) If you didn’t get a chance to read the post, here it is: Applying to the Wrong Universities I wanted to revisit this issue because I believe this is arguably the No. 1 college admission mistake that teenagers...

January 2, 2012

I want to give a big thanks to all of my regular visitors — and the new folks too — who helped to make 2011 the best year ever for The College Solution! I know 2011 was my best year because I use Google Analytics to keep track of how many people visit my college blog. Now that we’re in...

December 28, 2011

Last night an old high school friend of my daughter’s came over for dinner. We hadn’t seen her in awhile because she now lives in Northern California so it was great catching up with her. We were almost ready for dessert when Christina mentioned that her sister was applying to colleges. I hadn’t realized that her sister, I’ll call her...

December 21, 2011

If you plan to apply to college as a stealth applicant listen up. Stealth applicants are teenagers who never contact a college before sending in their application. Stealth college applications used to be rare.  Most teenagers contacted colleges through traditional means such as requesting materials, talking to admission counselors at college fairs and visiting schools. Today, however, teenagers can learn...

December 19, 2011

Last week our son Ben called the house wanting to know if we wanted to Skype. We usually call him every Sunday to find out how he’s doing so whenever he contacts us it’s a big surprise. His primary reason for calling was to share with us how hard he was studying for his math final exam. He ended up...

December 8, 2011

If your child will be heading to college next fall, now is the time to prepare for applying for financial aid. Your first step is to know what type of financial aid applications you will have to complete. Students won’t be eligible for financial aid unless they complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or FAFSA. Filling out the...