The College Solutions Blog

June 21, 2010

Over the past two years, I’ve written scores of posts on this college blog about how to evaluate schools. Just the other day, I wrote a piece about my 10 favorite college websites. It can be challenging for families, however, to know how to use these tools to find the right colleges at the right price. Consequently, I wanted to...

June 19, 2010

What are the best college websites in the country? I tried to answer that question earlier this week when I wrote my first college blog post for US News & World Report. In the post, I nominated my own favorite college websites which can be invaluable for finding colleges, researching schools, pinpointing the generosity of individual colleges and learning about...

June 15, 2010

How many college blogs is too many? I am sheepishly asking this question because I’ve just started writing for my third college blog. You can find my newest college blog at US News & World Report. My first post,  The 10 Best College Websites, went live on the site this afternoon. I launched my first college blog, The College Solution,...

June 1, 2010

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...

May 18, 2010

Zillow, where you can find out how much your house is worth, has released a survey that suggests that Americans only spend five hours researching mortgages. That’s the same amount of time that Americans spend planning vacations. It’s significantly less time than the 10 hours that consumers devote to buying a car, which is obviously a much smaller purchase. That...

April 15, 2010

Here’s a grim college graduation rate statistic:  Fewer than 60% of college students graduate in six years. Of course, noncompetitive schools, which accept nearly all comers, drag down the national graduation rates. For instance, only 12.1% of students at Mountain State University in Beckley, WV, which accepts all its applicants, graduate in six years. In contrast, 96.8% of Harvard students...

April 12, 2010

Where do you begin a college search? When you research colleges, you’re going to want to find schools that will provide your teenagers with an excellent education and get them out the door in four years. But how do you even start such a daunting college search? Scattered around my blog, I’ve written plenty about how to conduct a college...

April 5, 2010

I am in Paris this week — at the tail end of a family vacation visiting my daughter, who is studying this year at the University of Barcelona. I’d rather be out exploring Paris and eating chocolate so I’m rerunning one of my favorite posts that explains how students can find wonderful colleges that might not normally be on their...

January 11, 2010

Want to research colleges, but not sure where to start? It’s no surprise. When I just typed “college” into Google, I got 634 million college websites. To make your job easier, I’m sharing wonderful websites that can help you assemble a great list of colleges. If you want to research specific colleges, here are my Top 10  College Websites: College...

January 7, 2010

Is your teenager’s high school counselor an expert on college? Probably not. In fact, the odds are high that your counselor’s knowledge about college admission strategies, standardized testing and scholarships is limited.  Ironically during this period of skyrocketing college costs, financial aid is often the subject that high school counselors know the least about. Many high school counselors are unfortunately...