The College Solutions Blog

January 16, 2013

Do you assume that most teenagers face lousy odds of getting accepted into a good college? Lots of families believe that the admission process is stacked heavily against applicants, but this isn’t true. I largely blame the media’s obsessive coverage of the most elite universities for that misconception. A report from the College Board, Trends in College Pricing 2012, clearly...

October 31, 2012

Just how prepared are high school counselors to do their jobs? The College Board has released a new report that suggests that counselors don’t believe they received adequate training to perform their jobs at the level they would like. I am mentioning this study because it focuses on an area that I feel passionately about. Many high school counselors are...

August 7, 2012

When students are developing their college lists, most of them (unless their parents are wealthy and don’t mind writing monster checks) should be paying attention to the net price of all their school picks.  Net price is what a school will cost you after scholarships and grants are deducted. An email that I received from a mom over the weekend...

July 18, 2012

How do you find colleges with the best financial aid? One way to simplify your search for colleges is to look for the institutions that typically meet the highest percentage of financial need. Of course, the best scenario is for your child to get accepted into a school that meets 100% of all its students’ demonstrated financial needs. Here’s an...

May 29, 2012

It’s not often that I stumble across a college blog that I can get really excited about. Today I am happy to share a great resource that stands out from the crowd. I urge everyone to check out DIYCollegeRankings. DIYCollegeRankings (the DIY stands for Do It Yourself), which was created by Michelle Kretzschmar, a former data analyst and the mom...

March 20, 2012

I’m going to keep yesterday’s post up another day because the College Board’s new consumer site – BigFuture – was experiencing difficulty staying online Tuesday. I had trouble accessing the site and you probably did too. Since I wrote the post below, I received a response from the College Board that promised to improve its Paying for College section. Here ...

March 1, 2012

In the higher-ed world, some things are highly predictable. Every year, for instance, millions of high school students head to college and every year schools raise their prices. Colleges and universities have rightfully taken a lot of flack for their annual price hikes. Traditionally, that’s been especially true with private institutions and particularly at the institutions that are now reaching...

March 1, 2012

In the higher-ed world, some things are highly predictable. Every year, for instance, millions of high school students head to college and every year schools raise their prices. Colleges and universities have rightfully taken a lot of flack for their annual price hikes. Traditionally, that’s been especially true with private institutions and particularly at the institutions that are now reaching...

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...

December 6, 2011

Over the weekend, teenagers across the country suffered through the final SAT exam of  2011, which gave me an excuse to share some statistics on the SAT.  If you missed the post, here it is: 8 Statistics You Didn’t Know About the SAT Today I’m answering a question from a mom, who was prompted to write after reading my SAT...