The College Solutions Blog

September 5, 2010

How can you tell if a college or university will cut the price for your child? You can get an idea by looking at a school’s Common Data Set. If you don’t know what a Common Data Set is, you’ll want to read the posts that I wrote last week on this valuable document: Researching Colleges With the Common Data...

September 2, 2010

The Common Data Set can be a great tool for researching colleges and universities. You can learn what a Common Data Set is by reading the post that I wrote yesterday: Researching Colleges With the Common Data Set Today I’m going to explore how you can use the Common Data Set to gain insights into what admission officers are looking...

September 1, 2010

At the beginning of yet another college admission season, I want to share one of my favorite tools that can help anyone research colleges and universities.  The tool is called the Common Data Set. College and universities all over the country produce their own Common Data Set every year. The Common Data Set is a document about 32 pages long...

August 29, 2010

If you hadn’t already noticed, this is college rankings month. US News & World Report, the big college rankings  gorilla, released its latest lists of the best liberal arts colleges and best universities earlier in August.  Forbes Magazine rolled out its best college list this month too and the Washington Monthly unveiled its picks for  best colleges a few days...

August 27, 2010

With the economy still floundering, more Americans are considering attending graduate school. But how do you shop for the best  graduate school programs? Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas A. Benton, an English professor at Hope College made a stab at answering that question. He observed that the  universities receiving the highest graduate school rankings aren’t always the...

August 26, 2010

Yesterday I wrote a blog post for CBSMoneywatch that included lists of the most popular graduate degrees. Here is the post: America’s Most Popular Graduate Degrees Not surprisingly, the MBA was the most popular master’s degree program for both men and women. What I found interesting, however, was how quickly the most popular master’s degree programs diverge for men and...

August 22, 2010

Some of you already know that I write a weekly college blog post for US News & World Report. While the magazine’s website contains a treasure trove of valuable information about college, I hate it’s college rankings. This put me in an uncomfortable position when the 2011 college rankings were released with tremendous fanfare last week. To coincide with the...

August 12, 2010

I am out of town the rest of this week because I’m helping my son Ben move across country to Beloit College. So I asked David Montesano, an independent college counselor at College Match, to write a guest post in my absence. At the end of the last admission cycle, David tallied up the merit awards that his clients earned...

July 26, 2010

In my last blog post I complained that too many high school students pick schools based primarily on size. And most of these students only want to look at schools that are large. Here is where I vented: My Pet Peeve: Picking Colleges by Size What’s more important, I argued, is a school’s mission. Today, I want to explore a...

June 29, 2010

Need help in choosing colleges?  It so, you’ll be interested in this college blog post by David Montesano. David is an admission strategist with College Match,  an educational consulting firm that aims to help families find great colleges at discount prices. Here are 5 things that David suggests that you keep in mind when when are looking for college matches:...