The College Solutions Blog

February 17, 2012

My husband took this picture of me and Minerva, my office assistant, yesterday in my horribly messy office. I thought it would help illustrate what I’ve been doing for the past few months. My office is a wreck because I’ve been totally preoccupied with writing the second edition of The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right...

January 30, 2012

I wrote a post for my CBS MoneyWatch college blog on Friday that blew out Antioch College’s server. How did I do that? Actually, it wasn’t me. I was just the messenger for the liberal arts college that had a dramatic announcement to make. For the next three years, Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH, is offering all its incoming...

January 9, 2012

I have been writing college blog posts recently about teenagers who have arguably been applying to the wrong colleges. (Scroll to the bottom to see my three previous posts.) All my posts have involved families who required financial aid, but today I’m sharing the plight of a father who is too wealthy to receive need-based help. Anxious Dad’s Email Here...

January 6, 2012

Winning private college scholarships can certainly help make college more affordable, but you need to know the realities of competing for college cash. My pet peeve about private scholarships is that people assume that they are the biggest source of college cash when they are really the smallest. Before you start hunting for private college scholarships, here are eight facts...

December 13, 2011

In my last post, I promised to share some resources that can help you evaluate the generosity of colleges and universities. If you missed it, here is that post: Sniffing Out Financial Aid Awards Today I’m going to focus on the College Board’s website, which is a quick and easy resource for anyone interested in getting financial aid statistics on...

November 14, 2011

Over the weekend my sister was telling me about a teenager, who is getting recruited by a couple of Ivy League schools to play softball. The parents are excited about the prospects of her daughter getting a sports scholarship to an Ivy League school. Does anybody out there know what’s wrong with this dream? The eight Ivy League schools don’t...

October 25, 2011

I’m sharing an email that I received over the weekend from an anxious dad in North Carolina, who asked me for advice about an early decision application. I’ve changed the name of the son. Here is what he wrote: Dilemma from a Dad from North Carolina My son, Andrew, would like to go to Davidson College here in North Carolina;...

September 29, 2011

I invited David Montesano, one of my favorite independent college counselors, to write this guest post after I heard him talk about the challenges that middle-class families face in paying for college. Montesano is the founder of College Match Educational Consultants in Seattle and other cities. By David Montesano The rising cost of college is nothing less than a crisis...

September 27, 2011

When families look at financial aid packages they often assume that a school’s financial aid support will remain the same for four years. That, however, is a dangerous assumption to make. The financial support that some colleges and universities give students will shrink after their freshmen year. Bait and Switch? Why would this happen? I can’t speak for schools that...

August 23, 2011

While I was in New York last week, I spent some time with families of students interested in majoring in the performing arts. The parents shared the same anxieties as the moms and dads of other college-bound teenagers. They wondered how they would pay for college. And the kids seemed preoccupied about how they could manage to sing or dance...