The College Solutions Blog

September 24, 2015

One of the most unpleasant aspects of filing for financial aid is how rushed the process has always been. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid isn’t released until Jan. 1 each year, which has never given parents much time to file for financial aid. This is especially true since families need their tax returns finished before finalizing the FAFSA....

September 14, 2015

If paying for college is going to be a challenge, and it usually is, it’s important that you obtain your Expected Family Contribution before your begin looking at colleges with your teenagers. In fact, obtaining your EFC should be the FIRST STEP you take in the college process. Here is a quick rundown of what an EFC is, why it’s important, how...

September 1, 2015

Here is what typically happens during college admission season: Students apply to whatever colleges they want without having any clue about whether these schools will give them grants and/or scholarships.  Parents are often onboard with their children disregarding price when finalizing their lists. The attitude of these moms and dads can be summed up this way:  Go ahead and apply...

August 26, 2015

Are you freaking out about the price of a bachelor’s degree? If so, you’ll want to attend one of my upcoming free webinars where I will share 10 easy ways to cut the cost of college. The two webinars that I had earlier in the summer were so successful – more than 900 people registered – that I’m rolling out...

August 17, 2015

Parents are often worried about how their assets will impact their chances for financial aid. Often their fears are overblown because financial aid formulas don’t penalize families for all their assets. But it is true that families are now experiencing a harder time protecting their assets from financial aid calculations because of a horribly flawed federal formula that needs to...

August 10, 2015

Today I am sharing a guest post on athletic scholarships that Jon Fugler,  the founder and CEO of Recruit-Me, wrote. Fugler has been helping parents and student-athletes navigate the recruiting road since 2002. Lynn O’Shaughnessy What’s the best way to get on a college coach’s radar when seeking an athletic scholarship? You first need to understand that the burden is...

July 27, 2015

Today I’m rerunning a previous post that I’ve updated that I hope will reduce the stress level of many parents reading it. I initially wrote the post in reaction to the dilemma of a teenager with a 3.4 GPA who failed to capture a scholarship from any of the schools where he applied. This is hard to do when you...

July 16, 2015

While there are nearly 2,800 four-year colleges and universities in the United States, there are less than six dozen that claim that they meet 100% of the demonstrated financial need of all or most of their freshmen. The list below includes the names of those schools. I’ve also included institutions on this list that say that they meet at least...

July 7, 2015

As recently as the early 1990s, most students did not take out college loans. Today nearly 71% of students borrow to pay for college. The typical student borrower graduating with the class of 2015 left college with an average debt of $35,051, according to an analysis by Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of Edvisors.com. In Kantrowitz’s chart below, you will see that the...

June 22, 2015

Many students who aren’t interested in attending a public university in their own state tend to look at state institutions elsewhere. Choosing public universities outside your border can sometimes be a relative  bargain. In other cases, the price you pay as a nonresident will be exorbitant and comparable to private universities that are stingy with financial aid and/or merit awards....