The College Solutions Blog

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...

March 30, 2011

I’ve been hearing from parents of high school seniors lately who are either elated by their financial aid awards or utterly depressed. Here are some examples: A dear friend of mine is thrilled because her son Geoffrey received a very large need-based aid package to Macalester College, which is where he is heading in the fall. (Gosh, I just love...

March 17, 2011

I’m rooting for two teams in the NCCA basketball tournament. The University of Missouri (I graduated from Mizzou’s world famous journalism school) and San Diego State University, which is a 10-minute drive from my house. With the tournament revving up on St. Patrick’s Day, I wanted to share a post that I wrote for my CBS MoneyWatch college blog that...

March 16, 2011

My husband and I reached a milestone yesterday. We made our last payment for our daughter’s bachelors degree. Caitlin is graduating from Juniata College in May and we’ve managed to pay for her degree — she double majored in business and Spanish — without taking out loans.  I should have bought a bottle of champagne to celebrate, but my husband...

March 10, 2011

Yesterday I wrote about college coop programs that link students up with jobs while they are still students. Here is the post: Do You Need a Coop Program To Get a Job? What I am far more interested in sharing is what these and other private universities, many of which are located on the East Coast, cost. I’m going to...

February 18, 2011

Want to know what the nation’s most generous colleges are? If so, you’ll want to take a look at US News & World Report’s newly released list of schools. All the institutions on the list say that they meet 100% of their students’ demonstrated financial need. Not surprisingly, nearly all of the schools on this list are private. You can...

January 17, 2011

American colleges and universities are continually getting slammed for costing too much, but there are precious few people suggesting concrete ways to shrink these costs. The Center for College Affordability and Productivity, however, has produced a white paper that lays out: 25 Ways to Reduce the Cost of College There are some excellent suggestions on the center’s list. What do...

January 13, 2011

Do you have financial aid questions? If you do, head over to the college blog at The New York Times. This week Mark Kantrowitz, a financial aid guru and the publisher of FinAid and FastWeb, is answering people’s questions about financial aid. So far, Kantrowitz  has answered three rounds of questions that you can read here: Part 1: Answers to...

January 12, 2011

If  your teenager is hoping to attend a state university in California, brace yourself. The grim financial challenges consuming the University of California and the California State University systems, as well as the state’s huge community college system are of historic proportions. Remember the student protests at UC Berkeley, UCLA and elsewhere last year? I think things could get much...

January 5, 2011

In yesterday’s college blog post, I wrote about a dad who is wondering if he should take a CPA’s  advice and hide his home equity from colleges in an annuity. If you didn’t read the post, here it is: Dubious Financial Aid Advice: Hiding Home Equity After reading my post, Todd Weaver, a college consultant at Strategies for College, Inc.,...