The College Solutions Blog

April 17, 2012

I’ve been receiving some fascinating comments lately that were triggered by recent posts that shared the agony of students who aimed for the Ivies and other elite schools and got spurned or who couldn’t afford the tab. If you missed the posts, here they are: Should You Blow the Budget on Cornell? The Odds of Getting Off a Wait List...

April 2, 2012

My husband Bruce and I visited Beloit College over the weekend to attend a biannual parent committee meeting and – of course – we were excited to see Ben, who is finishing up his sophomore year. When you live in San Diego, it’s hard to pinpoint when spring arrives since it is green year round. Actually, more greenish/brownish. At Ben’s...

February 2, 2012

Claremont McKenna College recently announced that it had been sending inflated SAT scores to US News since 2005. According to news accounts, the vice president and dean of admissions admitted inflating the scores and resigned. The college’s critical reading scores were inflated by an average of 17 points and the math scores were bumped up by an average of 10.5...

January 30, 2012

I wrote a post for my CBS MoneyWatch college blog on Friday that blew out Antioch College’s server. How did I do that? Actually, it wasn’t me. I was just the messenger for the liberal arts college that had a dramatic announcement to make. For the next three years, Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH, is offering all its incoming...

January 26, 2012

What schools produce the most undergraduates who end up heading off to graduate school? The subject came up yesterday because a friend of mine was telling me about a brilliant teenager who wants to eventually get a PhD in physics. The student lives in California, but the mom wants him to apply to schools in the Midwest where she grew...

January 16, 2012

I met a teenage girl during the fall who was excited about applying to Hampshire College. She had visited the campus in Amherst, MA, had met professors and talked with students. She was smitten. She and her mother felt good that they had done their due diligence on the college, but then I asked them a question that drew a...

January 11, 2012

I received an email yesterday from a mom in Southern California, whose daughter Nicole is getting grief about the Southern universities that she has applied to.  Karen’s email raises a lot of interesting issues including preconceived notions about schools, the tendency of some parent(s) to push kids to attend their alma mater or state schools and a lack of understanding...

January 2, 2012

I want to give a big thanks to all of my regular visitors — and the new folks too — who helped to make 2011 the best year ever for The College Solution! I know 2011 was my best year because I use Google Analytics to keep track of how many people visit my college blog. Now that we’re in...

November 1, 2011

Today I want to share a nifty interactive tool on The Chronicle of Higher Education’s  website that you can use to see where students, who attend any college or university, are coming from. When I used it to look up the the University of Michigan, I discovered that the biggest contingent of nonresidents were from New York (361), Illinois (319),...

October 10, 2011

When it comes to checking out colleges, I’m a big believer that more students should be casting a wider net by looking at schools that aren’t in their own state. Most teenagers don’t do this. The vast majority of students never look beyond the public universities in their own state and 52% don’t wander more than 100 miles from home....