The College Solutions Blog

Valuable insights from Lynn O’Shaughnessy
a nationally recognized college expert.

Liberal Arts Colleges

What's a Medium-Sized University?

What does it mean when a teenager says, “I want to go to a medium-sized university?” This week I’ve been discussing the issue of college size. Kids often base a great deal of their decision about college on its size and why that can be a problem. Here are my past two posts: My Pet Peeve: Picking Colleges By Size...

Research Universities: What You Need to Ask

In my last blog post I complained that too many high school students pick schools based primarily on size. And most of these students only want to look at schools that are large. Here is where I vented: My Pet Peeve: Picking Colleges by Size What’s more important, I argued, is a school’s mission. Today, I want to explore a...

My Pet Peeve: Picking Colleges By Size

Here’s one of my biggest pet peeves about how teenagers look for colleges: When teenagers put together a list of potential colleges, a campus size requirement is often way up at the top of their criteria. I want to go to a big school. I don’t want to go to small school. I’m interested in a medium-sized school. Hardly anyone...

More Liberal Arts Colleges In or Near Cities

Because so many college students like to attend schools in metropolitan areas, I wrote a post yesterday about 30 liberal arts colleges that are located in cities or close to them. Here is the link: 30 Liberal Arts Colleges In or Near Cities When I compiled the list, I figured that I had overlooked some liberal arts colleges and so...

30 Liberal Arts Colleges In or Near Cities

I’ve talked to a lot of teenagers, who are interested in liberal arts colleges as long as they are in cities or at least close to metropolitan areas. Unfortunately for these kids, many liberal arts colleges are in rural areas. My daughter Caitlin is fully aware of this reality because she attends Juniata College, in Huntingdon, PA, which is a...

11 Great Colleges – Mostly Off the Beaten Path

What do the University of Notre Dame and Raritan Valley Community College have in common? They both made the short list of great colleges that are doing an exceptionally good jobs. The list was complied by Andrew Hacker, a professor at Queens College and Claudia Dreifus, a New York Times writer, who are the authors of How Colleges are Wasting...

Shaving $98,000 off the Cost of College

For three million students, the angst about getting into college had disappeared. That’s roughly the number of freshmen who will be attending college in the fall. The final grades are in, the college admission decisions are made. Freshmen face the prospects of locating extra-long sheets, discovering the name of their dorm roommate, attending freshmen orientation and counting down the days...

Choosing Colleges: 5 Things You Must Do

Need help in choosing colleges? It so, you’ll be interested in this college blog post by David Montesano. David is an admission strategist with College Match, an educational consulting firm that aims to help families find great colleges at discount prices. Here are 5 things that David suggests that you keep in mind when when are looking for college matches:...

My Kids Are Growing Up

Saturday was a bittersweet day. My son Benjamin graduated from High Tech High. Ben received his diploma along with about 150 other seniors on the school’s lawn on a beautiful (naturally) morning in San Diego. High Tech High has never ranked students – that’s one of the things that I love about the school – so we didn’t have to...

2 College Case Studies: Where Should These Teens Go to College?

Over the past two years, I’ve written scores of posts on this college blog about how to evaluate schools. Just the other day, I wrote a piece about my 10 favorite college websites. It can be challenging for families, however, to know how to use these tools to find the right colleges at the right price. Consequently, I wanted to...