The College Solutions Blog

April 15, 2010

Here’s a grim college graduation rate statistic:  Fewer than 60% of college students graduate in six years. Of course, noncompetitive schools, which accept nearly all comers, drag down the national graduation rates. For instance, only 12.1% of students at Mountain State University in Beckley, WV, which accepts all its applicants, graduate in six years. In contrast, 96.8% of Harvard students...

April 12, 2010

Where do you begin a college search? When you research colleges, you’re going to want to find schools that will provide your teenagers with an excellent education and get them out the door in four years. But how do you even start such a daunting college search? Scattered around my blog, I’ve written plenty about how to conduct a college...

April 5, 2010

I am in Paris this week — at the tail end of a family vacation visiting my daughter, who is studying this year at the University of Barcelona. I’d rather be out exploring Paris and eating chocolate so I’m rerunning one of my favorite posts that explains how students can find wonderful colleges that might not normally be on their...

March 2, 2010

Yesterday I wrote this post about liberal arts colleges: Which is Better: A Liberal Arts College or a University? At the time, I promised that I’d summarize a thoughtful op-ed piece that Sanford J. Ungar, the president of Goucher College, wrote for the special liberal arts report that ran in The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Unfortunately, only Chronicle subscribers can...

January 11, 2010

Want to research colleges, but not sure where to start? It’s no surprise. When I just typed “college” into Google, I got 634 million college websites. To make your job easier, I’m sharing wonderful websites that can help you assemble a great list of colleges. If you want to research specific colleges, here are my Top 10  College Websites: College...

January 3, 2010

Every weekend I share the college blog posts that I wrote during the past week for CBSMoneyWatch. Since it was the last week of 2009, I used the posts as a way to highlight what I’ve written since CBSMoneyWatch launched during past summer. Favorite Blog Posts for 2009 In this post, you’ll find some of my favorite college blog posts....

January 1, 2010

Happy New Year. I want to usher in 2010 by sharing 10 of my college blog posts from last year that I think will help you: Cut the cost of college. Find scholarships. Snag better financial aid packages. Locate great schools. Cutting the cost of college with better grades How to Negotiate for a Better Financial Aid Package Will Saving...

November 22, 2009

Students at campuses across the University of California system rioted last week after the Board of Regents voted to increase undergraduate tuition by 32% next year. You can see video of the fee hike protest at UCLA here. I want to play devil’s advocate and suggest that tuition hikes at UCLA and the other UC campuses is a good thing....

November 20, 2009

Most families do not pay the sticker price for college.  In fact, most parents pay far below the published tuition. About two out of three full-time college students receive grants, otherwise known as scholarships, to attend school. If you just look at private institutions, the number who receive college scholarships is a whopping 80%. I obtained those figures by reading...

November 12, 2009

Today I want to share with you a great new web site that can help you research colleges:  College Insight. College Insight has gathered detailed information on nearly 5,000 colleges and universities in this country. You can find statistics for any school on such topics as these: College affordability. Check out statistics on tuition and total cost of attendance, average...