The College Solutions Blog

March 19, 2015

Are you freaking out about your teenager getting into an elite college or universities? If you are, you need to read the following guest column by Frank Bruni, a New York Times Op-Ed columnist, who has created a powerful antidote for the Ivy League jitters. In his excellent book, Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to...

March 4, 2015

In my last post, I urged parents, who are stressed about how their kids are going to get into the most elite schools, (these are mostly affluent families) to ditch this toxic worry. If you missed the post here it is: Stop Fixating On These Colleges I had a young alum from one of those elite schools write a thoughtful...

February 22, 2015

A lot of the parents attending my current online class on how to cut the cost of college are affluent and highly educated. Quite a few of these moms and dads attending my course have indicated to me that they would like to see their children attend elite schools. Not surprisingly, these parents have expressed concern about the cost of...

December 2, 2014

In my experience, high quality, independent test-prep firms produce some of the best college newsletters. One newsletter that I always make sure I read comes from Compass Education Group, which offers test prep in Northern and Southern California.  Today I am sharing a thought-provoking post that Matt Steiner, who is Compass Education’s marketing director, originally wrote for the test-prep firm’s...

September 22, 2014

High-achieving students who apply every year to the Ivies and other elites schools have heard the grim statistics about how ridiculously hard it is to get into these schools. That reality, however, doesn’t deter students from applying even though it’s pointless for most of them. Ambitious teenagers aiming to attend the nearly impregnable schools at the top of the rankings...

July 14, 2014

How do you know if the college or university that your child ultimately attends will provide him or her with an excellent education? You won’t. College pricing is inching closer to transparency thanks to net price calculators, but it’s largely impossible to form an educated opinion about the strength of a school’s learning environment beyond checking  an institution’s graduation rates....

June 19, 2014

I want to thank everybody who weighed in on my last post: Dad:  Should I Force My Son to Attend Cornell? I think everyone was in agreement (yeah!) that the young man, who enjoyed a great freshman year at Washington University in St. Louis, should NOT be forced to transfer to Cornell University. My visitors shared all sorts of excellent...

May 21, 2014

My son Ben graduated from Beloit College on Sunday. With 277 other seniors, Ben received his diploma on a beautiful spring day at this liberal arts college in Beloit, WI, which he considered his home for four years. This native San Diegan left nearly four years ago to move to a state where he had no connections, no relatives, no...

January 30, 2014

If  you have to pay nonresident tuition, are public universities worth the price? I think this is a good time to examine this issue since the Princeton Review just released it’s 2014 best value list of public colleges and universities. The Princeton Review included many state schools on its value list that are extremely expensive for nonresidents. According to federal...

November 25, 2013

The prospect of rejection is one of the most stressful aspects of the college admission process. In reality, however, most students don’t have to fear rejection. In its annual survey of college freshmen, UCLA always seems to find that at least 75% of students are accepted into their first-choice school. Today, I wanted to share a study, conducted by Inside Higher...