The College Solutions Blog

October 17, 2012

Ever thought about attending a Canadian university? A growing number of Americans are considering earning a college degree from up North. Actually, it’s not as far north as you might think because most Canadian universities are near the US border. Here are some reasons why you might want to consider exploring schools in Canada. 1. Reasonable price. The costs at...

September 7, 2012

Today I wanted to share some pictures taken before and after my husband and I took our son Ben to the airport. Ben, who is a junior at Beloit College, is spending the semester in Hungary through St. Olaf College’s Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program. A week after quitting his summer job working at a restaurant at Sea World, Ben...

August 6, 2012

Below you’ll find a guest blog that Bob Bessette, the father of a rising senior at Bowdoin College in Maine, wrote. This post first appeared on my college blog in December when Bessette’s daughter  was finishing up her semester abroad in Ireland. I am rerunning this blog post primarily because my own son Ben, who is a rising junior at...

February 22, 2012

This is the time of year when college students are making plans to study overseas in the fall. Many students attend colleges overseas during their junior year. Curiously enough, most of those students are women. Young men only represent about a third of the 270,600 American students studying overseas. That percentage, by the way, has remained about the same for...

December 27, 2010

If your child plans to study abroad while while in college, you need to prepare yourself. I wrote an blog post for CBS MoneyWatch that discusses what parents and students need to know about studying abroad based on the experience of my own daughter Caitlin, who attended the University of Barcelona for a year. You can find all the advice...

October 20, 2010

Ever thought about attending a Canadian university? A growing number of Americans are considering earning a college degree from up North. Actually, it’s not as far north as you might think because most Canadian universities are near the US border. There are some hidden academic jewels in Canada, which explains why you might be interested in exploring their Northern options....

September 15, 2010

I knew I was in a foreign country today when I looked outside my hotel window and saw a billboard that contained this message: Be health conscience. Eat a coconut every day. I’m in Jamaica, where I’ll be the featured (and apparently heavily promoted) speaker at a first annual college conference in Kingston. What could I possibly tell these Jamaican...

May 13, 2010

I’m a big believer in students studying abroad for a semester in college. My daughter Caitlin is one of the rare students who studied overseas for an entire school year. If I’m remembering correctly, only 5% of college students who study overseas stay for a year. Caitlin studied at the University of Barcelona. I think living in Barcelona was a...

April 9, 2010

European universities are nothing like American colleges and universities. That’s the conclusion that I drew during our family’s two-week vacation in Spain and France. We were visiting my daughter Caitlin, who has been attending the University of Barcelona for two semesters. During the vacation, I kept getting into conversations with Europeans about their universities. I had some knowledge about European...

March 29, 2010

College visit. Yes, it’s that time of year  when high school seniors and juniors are planning college visits during spring break. You can learn a lot during a college visit so you need to make the most of the opportunity. During a campus visit, here are 31 questions that you should ask: College Graduation Track Record What is your four-year...