The College Solutions Blog

October 16, 2018

If you need assistance completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or the CSS Profile – or wondering where to start – you’ll find helpful resources below! If your child will be in college for the 2019-2020 school year, you can file the FAFSA and the CSS Profile now. The official release date for both financial aid applications was...

June 30, 2017

As recently as the early 1990s, most students did not take out college loans. Today roughly two out of every three students borrow to pay for college due to the runaway cost of college. The typical student borrower is now leaving school with debt of roughly $37,000. Just the outstanding federal college loan debt now exceeds credit-card debt. Keep this...

November 11, 2016

Today I’m happy to share a guest blog post by Michelle Kretzschmar, who is the creator of an incredibly helpful website called DIYCollegeRankings. If you’re looking for colleges and wondering how you’re going to pay for them, I’d urge you to visit Michelle’s website! Lynn O’Shaughnessy By Michelle Kretzschmar Many people don’t know how much they’ve borrowed from college until...

July 11, 2016

Will you need to borrow to pay for college? As I mentioned in my last post, if you need to borrow the best loan will usually be the federal Direct Loan. These loans are the responsibility of students, but parents can repay this loan for their children. If you missed the post on student loans, here it is: The Best College...

June 24, 2016

As recently as the early 1990s, most students did not take out college loans. Today roughly two out of every three students borrow to pay for college due to the runaway cost of college. The typical student borrower is now leaving school with debt of roughly $35,000. Just the outstanding federal college loan debt now exceeds credit-card debt. Keep this...

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 23, 2014

When you are contemplating how much a bachelor’s degree is going to cost your family, you must keep this in mind: Colleges and universities are high-stakes businesses that want to charge you more than you feel comfortable paying. Your best weapon to make college more affordable is to become an empowered consumer. I am absolutely dead serious when I say...

May 27, 2014

As recently as the early 1990s, most students did not take out college loans. Today about two out of every three students borrow to pay for college due to the runaway cost of college. The typical student borrower is now leaving school with debt of $29,400. Just the outstanding federal college loan debt now exceeds credit-card debt. Is $29,400 a...

January 14, 2014

Would you like to make college more affordable? I assume you do since you’re visiting my college blog. While visiting my blog and reading my book will certainly help you become a smart college shopper, plenty of parents, as well as college consultants, have urged me to create an online course that would include step-by-step instructions on how families can...

March 25, 2013

This is the second day that I’m devoting to evaluating financial aid letters. If you missed it, here is the first post that I wrote on this important subject: What’s Wrong with This Financial Aid Letter? Today I’m sharing another financial aid award that I obtained from Paula Bishop, a CPA from Bellevue, WA, who received this letter from a...