The College Solutions Blog

April 10, 2012

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve been getting questions from parents who are agonizing about where their teenagers should attend college. It’s a tough decision and time is running out to pick the winners. The national deposit day for freshman is May 1. Here are some of choices facing a family that contacted me yesterday: College of Wooster, University...

April 9, 2012

This is the month when high school seniors must decide where they will attend college. It’s not surprising then that I’ve been getting emails from families agonizing about their choices. Here is one of those notes from a mom named Carmen: I would appreciate your professional advice in the following matter:  My son has narrowed down his choice to two...

March 28, 2012

When families look at financial aid packages they often assume that a school’s financial aid support will remain the same for four years. That, however, is a dangerous assumption to make. The financial support that some colleges and universities give students will shrink after their freshmen year. Bait and Switch? Why would this happen? I can’t speak for schools that...

March 20, 2012

I’m going to keep yesterday’s post up another day because the College Board’s new consumer site – BigFuture – was experiencing difficulty staying online Tuesday. I had trouble accessing the site and you probably did too. Since I wrote the post below, I received a response from the College Board that promised to improve its Paying for College section. Here ...

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 15, 2012

During the last two days on my college blog, I’ve shared ways to generate schools for your college list. Here they are if you missed them: Finding Hidden Gems for Your College List Getting Ideas For a College List Today I’m sharing 8 more ways to search for schools. 1. Use the federal college search engines. The most massive database...

February 14, 2012

Yesterday I described how you can use College Results Online to help you generate a promising list of college. If you missed it, here it is: Getting Ideas For a College List Here’s another idea:  Head to The Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which is the think tank that generates Forbes magazine’s annual college rankings. On the center’s site...

February 13, 2012

It’s intimidating when families hear that there are thousands of colleges and universities in this country. It’s equally unnerving when families try to grapple with this question:  Where do you find ideas? This week I hope to share some suggestions on web resources that can help you start collecting college candidates. The first one to the plate is College Results...

February 7, 2012

I received an email over the weekend from a mom who is stressing about whether her accomplished daughter would be better off attending a liberal arts college or a journalism school. I happen to be a graduate of the the nation’s oldest journalism school at the University of Missouri (see photo) and I’ll share some thoughts after the mom’s note....