The College Solutions Blog

September 13, 2011

As many of you know, I’m not a fan of US News and World Report’s college rankings even though I write a college blog for the magazine.  The methodology is flawed and the rankings sponsor does not try to measure what kind of education students receive at their schools. What I find even more troubling is the fact that  college...

August 29, 2011

I spent last week urging, some might say browbeating, people to look beyond the most obvious name schools when drawing up a college list. Beyond their local schools, I urged people to look at more than super expensive private East Coast schools, as well as prestigious state flagships that are charging obscene amounts of money — in some cases over...

August 26, 2011

If you’re willing to cast a wider net to find colleges, where do you start? Here is one way: Look at alternative college rankings. While US News & World Report’s college rankings hog the press coverage, I much prefer the college rankings that Forbes releases every summer. The Center for College Affordability and Productivity, a nonprofit education think tank, developed...

August 11, 2011

Some things about college are easy to measure. It’s easy to determine the win-loss record of the football or basketball teams. It’s easy to find out how many kids graduate in four years. (Nationally only about 35% pull this off.) It’s easy to determine if the campus is pretty or if the dorm food sucks. It’s awfully hard, however, to...

August 8, 2011

I got an email yesterday from a mom whose teenage daughter wants to become a registered nurse. The mother wanted to know how her daughter could find a list of colleges and universities that offer nursing degrees. This is a great question and the answer is relevant to anybody who wants to cast a wider net when looking for colleges....

July 27, 2011

Here is a true story: This spring a Denver teenager got into Dartmouth College, which was her dream school. The girl, however, is going to Princeton in the fall. Why? Her mom lobbied her to attend Princeton because it is No. 2 in US News & World Report’s rankings while Dartmouth is No. 9. This might be an extreme example...

July 8, 2011

Summer is a great time to research schools. So today I want to share a great online resource to help you evaluate colleges.  It’s called COLLEGEdata. COLLEGEdata can provide a ton of information on any college. I think it’s more indepth than what you can find by heading to the College Board and accessing a college’s profile through its College...

June 16, 2011

When should families start visiting colleges? A parent recently asked me that question and I’m going to respond by sharing the advice of Kris Hintz, a very smart college consultant in New Jersey, who addresses this issue in her upcoming book – the title is still not firmed up or I would share it. Kris believes that until a teenager...

June 6, 2011

When you are looking at colleges, don’t believe the sticker price. Why? Because college are priced like airline tickets. Everybody pays a different fare. When I give talks to families with teenagers, that’s one of the first points that I emphasize. It’s your job then to find colleges and universities that are not only great academic fits, but also financial...

May 31, 2011

As many of you know, I’m not a fan of US News & World Report’s college rankings. I write a college blog for US News, but that has never stopped me from arguing that the magazine’s rankings has prompted many colleges and universities to act badly and sometimes even behave unethically in pursuit of higher college rankings. This institutional behavior...