The College Solutions Blog

April 22, 2013

Is it worth it to attend an expensive private university with a recognizable brand name if you have to borrow heavily? That was a question that a New York Times reporter tackled in an article on Saturday entitled  Measuring College Prestige vs. Cost of Enrollment. I wasn’t surprised that the article, which included a few observations from me, was the...

April 19, 2013

In my last post I wrote about a teenager who applied to five Ivy League schools and didn’t get in. Tufts University, the teen’s top choice, also rejected her. For all the teenagers out there who believe they must go to an elite school to ensure an excellent future, there is hope. I firmly believe that it’s not the school...

April 17, 2013

One way that I try to keep up with what’s happening in the higher-ed world is to belong to some LinkedIn Groups including one called College Counseling for the Rest of Us. Last week Michael Szarek, the group’s founder, who is an assistant vice president at Felician College and a college consultant in New Jersey, started a discussion by throwing...

April 15, 2013

I decided to share a few photos that I took during my weekend trip to Beloit College. My husband and I hadn’t seen our son, Ben, who is finishing up his junior year, since the Christmas break. I apologize in advance for sharing family photos! Our excuse for schlepping to Beloit was to attend the college’s biannual parents committee that...

April 12, 2013

I am especially happy to share another set of merit scholarship awards that a teenager (this one from Georgia) earned. If you missed the first set of offers from a teenager in the Pacific Northwest that I shared in my last college blog post, you can find them here:  A Teenager’s Merit Scholarship Offers I was particularly psyched to receive...

April 10, 2013

The Guardian newspaper in London published an article last week that suggests that children of upper-middle-class families are having to attend public universities because they are too affluent to receive need-based aid and they aren’t getting scholarship from private institutions. What the reporter, who happens to be the wife of Bill Keller, the former editor of The New York Times,...

April 7, 2013

Every Friday I answer questions over at The College Solution’s Facebook page. Posting questions on Friday via my Facebook page is  the best way to get my attention. Lots of people email me, but I just can’t answer all the queries, which makes me feel guilty. My husband calls it the Catholic-school-girl guilt that I have never been able to...

April 3, 2013

I’ve been getting questions from parents who are agonizing about where their teenagers should attend college. It’s a tough decision and time is running out to pick the winners. The national deposit day for freshman is May 1. College Choices Here are some of choices facing a family that contacted me yesterday: St. Olaf, Grinnell, Bryn Mawr, Whitworth, Rose Hulman...

April 1, 2013

This is the time of year when high school seniors are visiting campuses that they hope will help them determine, once and for all, where they will be attending college in the fall. Many schools have accepted student weekends geared towards influencing teenagers’ decisions. These schools will often put visiting teenagers in dorms for the weekend and host special events...

March 29, 2013

In my last three posts, I’ve written about deciphering financial aid letters. As I’ve mentioned previously, I believe colleges and universities intentionally make these documents hard to understand. If you missed the posts where I griped about this reality, here they are: What’s Wrong With This Financial Aid Letter? Evaluating a Financial Aid Award The federal government has created a...