The College Solutions Blog

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

Money

Bad College Advice: Readers Weigh In

I devoted my last two college blog posts to exploring why high school counselors fail so many students with their college advice. If you missed them, here they are: What’s Wrong With High School Counselors What’s Wrong With High School Counselors, Part II I received many great comments regarding those posts and I wanted to share some today, as well...

The Nation’s 30 Most Expensive Colleges

If you’ve spent much time on my college blog, you already know that published college price tags are meaningless. Most students receive some type of price break, thanks to federal or state grants and/or discounts from the schools themselves. What is far more important than a sticker price is a school’s net price. It’s All About the Net Price A...

Can You Hide Your Home Equity From a College?

I’ve gotten a couple of questions lately about whether cashing out home equity and putting it into an annuity is a legit way of increasing a family’s chances of getting financial aid. Consequently, I decided to share a post on the topic that I wrote earlier in this year in response to an email from a dad, who was interested...

My Favorite Books on College: A YouTube Review

Interested in some summer reading? I’ve got bookcases packed with college books in my home office. In this YouTube video, however, I share some of my favorite books about college. College Workshop I’ll be giving the final college workshop this Saturday (July 23) in a summer series for parents and teenagers at the University of California, San Diego. If you’d...

Who Will Pay What for College?

The majority of families end up borrowing for college. But when parents and teenagers talk about how they are going to divide up that responsibility, they rarely possess a good idea of what this debt burden is going to mean for them when the bills come due. That’s why I’m recommending a tool from SimpleTuition, an aggregator of private student...

Anatomy of a Stingy College and a Generous One

My last post focused on net price calculators that colleges and universities must have installed on their websites by late October. If you missed it, here it is: A New Way to Add Up the Cost of College Today, I want to share a nifty online tool from COLLEGEdata that can help you get a sense of how much a...

A New Way to Add Up the Cost of College

A New Way to Add Up the Cost of College By the end of October, colleges and universities across the country must install a net price calculator on their websites. As I’ve mentioned previously, these net price calculators are going to be a tremendous boon to families. For the first time, a family will have a reasonable idea of what...

Grandparents: Doing More Harm Than Good

It’s great when grandparents can help with college costs, but you don’t want their generosity to backfire. At a 4th of July party this weekend, I talked with a couple whose children’s college choices have, strangely enough, been diminished by grandparents money. Here’s what happened: Years ago the grandparents gave each of the three children a significant amount of money...

Don’t Believe the Sticker Price: The Most Expensive Colleges in the Country

This week the U.S. Department of Education released lists of the most expensive state and private colleges and universities in America. The goal of pointing fingers, which was mandated by Congress, was to shine the spotlight on schools which don’t seem at all ashamed of their high prices. Here’s where you can find all the college lists. I wasn’t surprised...

Should Professors Work As Hard As We Do?

Should professors work as hard as many of the rest of us? If you compare the sort of work week and vacation time that many professors enjoy with other highly educated professionals, you could conclude that there are a lot of slackers hanging out in the Ivory Towers. I hope that professor productivity becomes a big issue with the published...