The College Solutions Blog

April 21, 2011

How many times have you read news accounts about American students lagging behind countless other countries in academic achievement? In a recent standardized test of math proficiency, we’re way behind Taiwan (No. 1), Hong Kong (No. 2) and Korea (No. 3), but wait. We can’t even compete with the likes of Slovenia and the Slovak Republic. When I’ve read the...

April 16, 2011

Where do you begin a college search? When you research colleges, you’re going to want to find schools that will provide your teenagers with an excellent education and get them out the door in four years. But how do you even start such a daunting college search? Scattered around my blog, I’ve written plenty about how to conduct a college...

April 14, 2011

I received an email from a high school junior in San Diego today that prompted me to write this post. The teenager came to hear me talk last night at a presentation hosted by a financial adviser. At one point I mentioned that one in five colleges say that an applicant’s demonstrated interest is very important in their admission decisions....

April 4, 2011

In the financial aid process, many schools treat students with divorced parents differently. As someone who has been married for more than 26 years, I don’t think this is always fair, but it’s the reality. Today I’m going to illustrate how schools can treat families of divorce differently by using the story of a girl, who I’ll call Sophia. Sophia...

April 3, 2011

In recent days I’ve been hearing from all sorts of people – strangers, friends and acquaintances – about their college admission successes and failures. It’s been fascinating to hear the experiences of teenagers who have now received all their college acceptances. In general, the teenagers who created an unrealistic list of colleges, otherwise known as reach schools, now have far...

April 1, 2011

The Ivy League schools sent out their acceptance letters this week and most students who had dreamed of going to these universities and other highly selective schools are disappointed. I’m going to share the experience of one highly accomplished girl during this admission season to illustrate why you need to cast a wide net when applying to colleges. The girl,...

March 31, 2011

Note: Yesterday I promised that I’d share this post that I wrote last year when my son, who is currently finishing up his freshman year in college, was awaiting his financial aid awards. It’s a timely subject since so many families are routinely disappointed at the financial aid awards they are receiving. Student aid letters are hitting mailboxes across the...

March 28, 2011

This is an excerpt of a post that I wrote for my college blog at CBS MoneyWatch last week after attending the biggest annual college fair in San Diego. You can read the entire post here: What’s Wrong With America’s Dream Colleges When I looked at The Princeton Review’s newly released lists of America’s most popular dream colleges, Iimmediately saw...

March 24, 2011

Can Facebook hurt a teenager’s chances of getting accepted to colleges? Specifically can the stuff that students post on Facebook impact their chances? Unigo, the popular college research website, recently posed that question to admission experts from around the country. Unigo offered to share some of the responses with my college blog visitors.  You can find the rest of the...

March 20, 2011

The college visit season is in full swing. High school seniors are fanning out across the country to check out colleges for the last time before they make their big decision. Visiting campuses during spring break is an annual tradition, but some collegiate suitors are trying to make their campus tours for accepted students more meaningful while distinguishing themselves from...