The College Solutions Blog

June 10, 2009

Are colleges favoring rich kids more than usual? A story in The New York Times suggests that private schools, which are hurting financially, are favoring affluent students whose parents can write fat tuition checks. The article focused on Reed College, which is an academically celebrated school that’s a magnet for iconoclastic students. With its endowment in the crapper and more...

May 29, 2009

How would you like to research a college in 10 minutes? Sound impossible? Not really. In my most recent college post for CBSMoneyWatch.com, I share three quick ways to research a school. I use these shortcuts all the time to help me size up a school pretty quickly....

April 10, 2009

Colleges loath the “N” word. Administrators hate it when parents call them up and want to negotiate a better financial aid package. Well, that’s too bad. Colleges cost too much money for families to automatically agree to a six-figure commitment. If you’re going to negotiate, however, you’re nearly out of time. The traditional deadline for deposits to secure a spot...

March 31, 2009

The New York Times published a front-page article recently which discussed how some colleges are giving preferential treatment to rich students.  The trend shouldn’t be surprising. Actually, the vast majority of private colleges have been playing out of this rule book for many years. It didn’t take the current financial crisis to trigger it. Regardless of how you feel about...

March 21, 2009

Community college scholarships are going begging. That’s what the faculty senate president at a community college in San Diego told me this morning when I bumped into him at the dog park. He wasn’t talking about federal Pell Grants or other state or federal aid. He was referring to community college scholarship that benefactors have started at particular schools. Sometimes...

March 7, 2009

If you want your child to snag an athletic scholarship, there’s no better sport than women’s rowing. Last year The New York Times completed an exhaustive research on the odds of winning an athletic scholarship and women’s rowing topped the list. According to the newspaper, 2,359 teenage girls row in high school and 2,295 girls receive rowing scholarships. EXCELLENT ODDS!...

February 8, 2009

Have you ever heard of a college prereading an application? Probably not, but in this scary economic climate, prereads could become commonplace. I learned about prereads last week when I was reporting on a package of stories for a national media outlet on various financial aid strategies. When the articles are published in a month, I’ll provide the links from...

January 19, 2009

My daughter called me yesterday to complain about the cost of her college textbooks. One of Caitlin’s upper level Spanish books was going to cost her close to $200. She was thrilled, however, when she found a used older textbook edition — missing the CD — for a mere $15 online. Ironically, it’s the frugality of students like Caitlin which...

January 11, 2009

My son’s principal holds a breakfast chat with parents each month and at the last one, Brett mentioned that he is always amazed at how few students at the end of each semester ask teachers how they might improve their grades. It should be a no brainer, Brett suggested, for students to ask their teachers if they can do extra...

December 22, 2008

An increasing number of high school seniors are deciding to skip applying to private colleges and universities because they worry that the costs will be too high in these hard economic times. That was the gist of a story in today’s New York Times. While it’s always essential to apply to financial safety schools, families could be cutting off their...