The College Solutions Blog

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

Money

UC Admissions: 7 Facts You Need to Know

The University of California’s admission practices generated a lot of angst and speculation in recent months, which led to a lot of curiosity about how the UC schools would handle the the latest crush of college applications with money tighter than ever. Now that the most recent UC admission season is history, here are 7 facts about who got in...

Shrinking the Cost of College: Twitter Chat Tonight

If you’d like to learn more about shrinking the cost of college, I’ll be sharing advice on the first edition of #CollegeChat at 6 p.m. PST tonight on Twitter. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to find this one-hour college Twitter chat. You can find the instructions at the bottom of this post. During the live Twitter chat, I...

New York University: Tale of 2 Students

Today I’m going to use New York University as a punching bag. I’m going to use NYU to illustrate how too many well-meaning families muddle through the college process and end up looking for the most highly ranked colleges without considering the price. Some of these families end up like Cortney Munna, a 26-year-old woman, who is facing nearly $100,000...

Financial Aid: How to Find Out If You Qualify

Today I want to share one of the many financial aid questions that I tackle in my new eBook, Shrinking the Cost of College: 152 Ways to Cut the Cost of a Bachelor’s Degree. This question happens to be one that I believe most families worry about: How do you know if you will qualify for financial aid? Here are...

What You Don't Know About Athletic Scholarships

I hadn’t planned on writing about athletic scholarships for three days in a row, but a father of a Division I athlete at Indiana University emailed some great observations that I wanted to pass along. I should mention that his daughter is a rower, which is the only sport that I know of where just about any girl who rows...

The Hazards of Chasing an Athletic Scholarship

I wanted to share a great response about athletic scholarships that I received after posting, 2 Worst Places to Find College Cash. I heard from Kris Hinz, who is a college counselor at Position U 4 College, who was agreeing with me that too many parents think that their kids are going to win athletic scholarships. Only 2% of high...

2 Worst Places to Look for College Cash

This week I intend to share with you a few of the money saving tips in my new eBook, Shrinking the Cost of Colleges: 152 Tips to Cut the Price of a Bachelor’s Degree. Inside the eBook, you’ll find the best sources of college cash. Here’s Lesson No. 1: One of the most important things you can do to shrink...

New College eBook: 152 Ways to Cut the Cost of College

Are you worried about how you’re going to pay for college? I thought so, which is why I wrote an eBook that’s packed with ways to cut college costs. The title of my new eBook is Shrinking the Cost of College: 152 Ways to Cut the Cost of a Bachelor’s Degree. Click the book icon on the right to learn...

America's Most Expensive College Textbooks

What are the most expensive textbooks in America? This week I provided the answer. At my other college blog over at CBSMoneyWatch, I wrote a post that contained the names of the 12 most expensive college textbooks. The most expensive one — Acta Philosophorum The First Journal of Philosophy – cost $1,450 retail. The next priciest textbook is Encyclopedia of...

The States Where College Students Stay Close to Home

In these hard economic times, it’s best to cast a wide net when applying for colleges. But most college students continue to stay close to home. Staying close to home for college can sometimes be a mistake. For some students, the best colleges — financially and economically — will be a time zone or two away. Why aren’t state schools...