The College Solutions Blog

November 8, 2013

Excuse me if this sounds ridiculously elementary, but here goes: One way to cut your college costs is to look for schools with lower sticker prices. My nephew Matt attends Westminster College in Fulton Mo, a liberal arts college, where the tuition and room/board is $30,490. Ninety eight percent of the students at Westminster don’t pay full price. The average...

November 4, 2013

As I’ve mentioned in previous college blog posts, net price calculators allow you to obtain a personalized estimate of what a school will cost after deducting any scholarships and grants that your child might be receiving. Before you let your child apply to any colleges, make sure you have used each school’s net price calculator. Unfortunately, not all calculators are...

October 30, 2013

If you’ll be filling out the FAFSA during this admission season for a high school teenager, be careful how you list the colleges that your child will be applying to. Colleges could use that information against you. Some schools — no one knows how many – are checking the FAFSA to see in what order an applicant lists his or...

October 28, 2013

If your family will need to depend on financial aid to attend college, your best bet is to find a school that will offer an excellent financial aid package to your child. A great way to assess the generosity of any school is to look at the percentage of financial need it typically meets for its students. Teenagers, who earn...

September 23, 2013

I was in Toronto for the past several days attending the annual monster conference of the National Association for College Admission Counselors. I was a presenter with a couple of my friends – Paula Bishop and Cyndy McDonald – at a pre-conference, which I hope was beneficial for those who attended. I can’t recall ever sharing the microphone with anybody...

September 19, 2013

My last post focused on whether families should indicate on a college application whether they will seek financial aid. Here’s my position: if you need financial aid to attend college, you should apply for aid. In case you missed it, here is the post: Should You Apply for Financial Aid? My post prompted a mom to make this observation: Good...

September 17, 2013

Should I Apply for Financial Aid? Here’s a variation of a question that I always get during admission season: Someone told me yesterday that it’s better to answer “No” to the “Do you intend to apply for need based financial aid” question on the Common Application. My son has already submitted his applications and he answered “yes” to that question...

August 26, 2013

How can you find the most generous colleges? The ones that meet 100% of financial need or close to it? And what about the schools that provide merit scholarships for affluent students who don’t qualify for need-based aid? How can you find schools that provide a large number of these scholarships? You can find the answers to those questions by...

August 19, 2013

I want to thank everybody who offered advice to the single mom, who is anxious about her daughter’s college options. You can read all the comments and the original post here: A Mom Stressing About College Today I thought I’d offer my own suggestions about the options for this teenager, who thinks that she might want to be a teacher....

August 16, 2013

I recently received an email from a single mom who is stressed out about how she is going to afford college. I wanted to share her email and solicit suggestions from you. I have my own ideas, but I’ll hold onto them for the next post. I always love to read the suggestions from my readers so if you have...