The College Solutions Blog

February 27, 2012

The No. 1 way to cut the cost of college is to become an educated consumer. You can learn how by attending my popular online course, The College Cost Lab. Learn more about The College Cost Lab that will start in June, 2017. Lynn O’Shaughnessy Deadbeat Parents Who Won’t Help Pay for College I got an email over the weekend...

February 24, 2012

The majority of families end up borrowing for college. But when parents and teenagers talk about how they are going to divide up that responsibility, they rarely possess a good idea of what this debt burden is going to mean for them when the bills come due. That’s why I’m recommending a  tool from SimpleTuition, an aggregator of private student...

February 23, 2012

Today I’m sharing a guest post from Kenneth O’Connor, director of student advocacy at cuStudentLoans.org, which is a source for private student loans. If you end up shopping for a private student loan, the best place will almost always be at a credit union, but that’s a topic for another day. O’Connor  has written a post about how the Free...

February 20, 2012

What are the most generous colleges and universities in the country? US News & World Report attempts to answer that question every year when it rolls out its lists of institutions that self report that they meet 100% of each student’s financial need. Today I’m sharing the latest list that US News released last week. Not surprisingly, highly elite schools...

February 17, 2012

My husband took this picture of me and Minerva, my office assistant, yesterday in my horribly messy office. I thought it would help illustrate what I’ve been doing for the past few months. My office is a wreck because I’ve been totally preoccupied with writing the second edition of The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right...

February 17, 2012

My husband took this picture of me and Minerva, my office assistant, yesterday in my horribly messy office. I thought it would help illustrate what I’ve been doing for the past few months. My office is a wreck because I’ve been totally preoccupied with writing the second edition of The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right...

February 1, 2012

Many families worry that their college savings accounts will kill their chances for financial aid. It’s been my experience that it’s usually dads who get stressed out about how colleges will treat their college accounts for financial aid purposes. Some fathers whom I’ve talked are down right bitter. They are especially incensed at the possibility that families that didn’t set...

January 31, 2012

Many of the biggest misconceptions that people have about the college process revolve around financial aid. Now that we’re in the midst of financial aid season, I wanted to share  four  financial aid myths that are probably the most common. 1. I make too much money to qualify for financial aid. You shouldn’t automatically assume that you won’t qualify for...

January 25, 2012

The federal government has been trying for years to make the Free Application for Federal Student Aid less complicated. It should get kudos for the effort, but millions of parents still mess up when tackling this financial aid form. But bless its heart, the federal government is trying, in what might be it’s biggest push ever, to make completing the...

January 24, 2012

Now that we’re in the thick of FAFSA season, I wanted to answer some questions on my college blog that I’ve been getting about financial aid forms. If you have your own questions, please leave them in the comment box below. Lynn O. Mom’s question: Try as I might I still can’t get my hands around the whole financial aid...