The College Solutions Blog

January 17, 2011

American colleges and universities are continually getting slammed for costing too much, but there are precious few people suggesting concrete ways to shrink these costs. The Center for College Affordability and Productivity, however, has produced a white paper that lays out: 25 Ways to Reduce the Cost of College There are some excellent suggestions on the center’s list. What do...

January 14, 2011

I gave a presentation on Shrinking the Cost of College last night on CollegeWeek Live. I talked for about 30 minutes from my office and then I answered questions from the audience. Here are some of the topics that I covered: Where you can find the greatest source of college grants. How you can improve your chances of getting college...

January 13, 2011

Do you have financial aid questions? If you do, head over to the college blog at The New York Times. This week Mark Kantrowitz, a financial aid guru and the publisher of FinAid and FastWeb, is answering people’s questions about financial aid. So far, Kantrowitz  has answered three rounds of questions that you can read here: Part 1: Answers to...

January 5, 2011

In yesterday’s college blog post, I wrote about a dad who is wondering if he should take a CPA’s  advice and hide his home equity from colleges in an annuity. If you didn’t read the post, here it is: Dubious Financial Aid Advice: Hiding Home Equity After reading my post, Todd Weaver, a college consultant at Strategies for College, Inc.,...

January 4, 2011

It’s the time of year when families of high school seniors start worrying about their home equity and financial aid. That’s why I decided to share an email that I got yesterday from a father who was interested in using the services of a CPA who says he could hide his home equity from financial aid formulas. Here is the...

January 3, 2011

Of all the myths swirling around the college admissions process, the ones involving financial aid myths are probably the biggest whoppers. Financial aid misconceptions can easily hurt families, which is why parents with a working knowledge of financial aid will often have a greater chance of capturing price breaks. With the latest financial aid season just beginning, here are four...

December 29, 2010

Today I want to share a piece, which originally ran in the Washington Post, that was written by Dean P. Skarlis, who  is president of The College Advisor of New York in Albany. I liked what Skarlis had to say so much about today’s college admission climate that I asked if I could share it with you. According to the...

December 8, 2010

I’ve been getting emails about home equity and financial aid. Consequently, I decided to run a college blog post that I wrote last year on the topic: Before the housing bubble burst, plenty of parents worried that their home equity was going to scotch any chance of receiving college financial aid. Even in this environment, it’s still going to be...

December 6, 2010

This is the time of year for parents of high school seniors to start thinking about applying for financial aid. Many families have heard of the FAFSA, but they don’t know what it was. Families need to complete the FAFSA to be eligible for state and federal grants. You also can’t obtain a federal student loan without filling out a...

December 5, 2010

This is the time of year when high school seniors and their parents begin reciting this age-old advice:  Follow your dreams. Families tend to use this advice to justify their children attending expensive dream colleges even if these schools will require taking on crushing student debt. I am a huge advocate of families researching schools before hand to see if...