The College Solutions Blog

December 29, 2010

Today I want to share a piece, which originally ran in the Washington Post, that was written by Dean P. Skarlis, who  is president of The College Advisor of New York in Albany. I liked what Skarlis had to say so much about today’s college admission climate that I asked if I could share it with you. According to the...

December 5, 2010

This is the time of year when high school seniors and their parents begin reciting this age-old advice:  Follow your dreams. Families tend to use this advice to justify their children attending expensive dream colleges even if these schools will require taking on crushing student debt. I am a huge advocate of families researching schools before hand to see if...

November 29, 2010

My last college blog post focused on a dilemma that many families face. When parents calculate what their Expected Family Contribution is, they discover it’s far higher than they anticipated. If you missed the post, here it is: Is Your EFC Too High? Today I want to stay on that topic and share an email that I received from a...

November 15, 2010

If you’ve been a regular visitor to my college blog, you know that college price tags are meaningless. A $50,000 college, for example, could cost some families less than a $25,000 school. More families in my state of California are beginning to realize this. I bet that’s why expensive private schools such as Whitman College, Colgate University and Swarthmore College...

November 10, 2010

Is your family going to qualify for financial aid? Many families that I talk to assume that they won’t qualify for financial aid. Many believe that the money that they’ve stashed in their college savings accounts will kill their chances. Stressed Out Dads It’s been my experience that it’s usually dads who get stressed out about how colleges will treat...

November 4, 2010

I’m not surprised by much that I read about the higher-ed world, but even I was amazed at how quickly private colleges are blowing by the $50,000 price tag. After crunching College Board data, The Chronicle of Higher Education has published a list of the nation’s 100 top colleges by price, which all cost at least $50,000. Two years ago,...

November 2, 2010

Do you know what a reach school is? I’ve been surprised recently to find out that many parents and teenagers don’t understand what the term means. I discovered just how elusive a concept it is during college talks that I occasionally give at high schools and other settings. When I ask, “Who knows what a reach school is?” I usually...

October 31, 2010

College costs continue to rise (surprise, surprise), according to the latest statistics released by the College Board. The news is depressing, but not as awful as you might assume. As I’ve discussed in previous college blog posts, roughly two-thirds of college students receive scholarships or other price breaks so the sticker prices are meaningless. 2010-2011 College Tuition Prices Type of...

October 28, 2010

I’ve gotten questions lately from parents whose children are being recruited by college coaches. I wanted to share the questions because it might help other families who are or will be navigating the Byzantine world of college athletics. I talked to Karen Weaver, my go-to-expert on college athletics. Weaver is the director of athletics at a Penn State campus and...

October 12, 2010

Zillow, the website that can estimate how much your house is worth, released a survey earlier this year that suggested that Americans only spend five hours researching mortgages. Americans devote about the same amount of time planning vacations. It’s significantly less time than the 10 hours that consumers devote to buying a car. That made me wonder how many hours...