The College Solutions Blog

October 8, 2009

How do teenagers find great colleges? Traditional ways have included buying a copy of one of those big, fat guidebooks such as Princeton Review’s The Best 371 Colleges and the Fiske Guide to Colleges. Or teenagers look at US News’ college rankings. Today, however, you can discover higher-ed possibilities by turning to online college matchmakers. Here are two popular matchmakers:...

September 26, 2009

I want to share an ACT strategy that I was excited to learn about at the education conference that I attended this week in Baltimore. I was fascinated to learn that an increasing number of colleges are cherry picking applicants’ ACT test scores. To understand what this means, here’s some background: Historically, colleges used a student’s composite ACT score that’s...

September 17, 2009

I’ve been helping the college counselor at my son’s San Diego high school with an overwhelming task that he faces every fall:  getting all the seniors ready to apply for college. Herding cats is the image that comes to mind when I contemplate how difficult his responsibility is. A lot of the teenagers who have asked me for advice have...

August 30, 2009

Don’t have time to track down relevant stories about college admissions, financial aid and important topics for families with teenagers? No worries. You can find lots of them right here at TheCollegeSolutionBlog.com and each weekend I also provide the links to the college posts that I write over at CBSMoneyWatch.com. Here are my CBS stories from the past week: Top...

August 19, 2009

What is the average ACT score? For 2009 high-school graduates, the average ACT score was 21.1, which is identical to last year’s number. The ACT, which measures English, math, science and reading, uses a scale of 1 to 36. The average ACT score remained the same even though a record 1.48 million students — 4% more than last year —...

August 2, 2009

I told you so! That’s what I was thinking when I wrote one of my college blog posts last week for CBSMoneyWatch.com. With the media writing nonstop about how teenagers could only afford public institutions in this wretched economy, I must have looked like a lunatic when I insisted that private colleges could still be the cheapest alternative for many...

July 23, 2009

Close to 840 colleges and universities no longer require that you submit an ACT or SAT test score for admission. That’s great news for anybody who bombs on standardized tests, but cynical reasons help explain what’s fueling the test-optional movement. In a story that I wrote for The New York Times, I share the hidden reasons why schools are dropping...

July 11, 2009

Here’s my weekend college blog roundup of the posts that I wrote during the past few days for CBSMoneyWatch.com. Hope you enjoy them. Is Harvard Going Broke? If you’ve been struggling to stay on a budget, you might appreciate what’s happening at Harvard, which is experiencing the worst financial crisis of its 373-year history. The Soaring Popularity of College Student...

July 5, 2009

One of the best ways you can prepare your teenager for college is to encourage them to read.  As a practical matter, a teenager who reads is not only likely to achieve better grades in high school, but also earn higher scores on the SAT or ACT. I understand how hard it can be to get many teenagers to read....

May 22, 2009

Will students who take SAT prep courses increase their test scores? To me the answer is obvious. Of course, you can boost your test scores through SAT preparation. Both of my children have benefited by attending an SAT prep course, My daughter’s score jump ed by at least 120 points. And my son, who just got his SAT scores back,...