The College Solutions Blog

September 13, 2013

I am holding one of my rare workshops at University of California, San Diego on Oct. 5 that will focus on how to find and pay for colleges. This will probably be the last workshop that I do at UCSD because I truly hate doing the marketing for it. If you enroll in this 3.5-hour workshop, I promise you that...

September 6, 2013

I received an email yesterday from a friend of mine whose son is a brilliant high school senior. She wanted to know what they should think about invitations her son has received to apply to colleges through VIP or priority applications. Here is her question: My son has received approximately 10+ email/print invitations from schools to complete their priority applications....

August 23, 2013

On Sunday at 4:30 p.m. PDT Sunday, Michelle Kretzschmar of Do It Yourself College Rankings and I will be holding our last college webinar. I will be demonstrating a valuable online tool that allows you to sort colleges by generosity. Please visit my webinar page at 4:30 p.m. PDT to see the webinar. People who watch live will be able...

July 3, 2013

I want to thank everyone for such thoughtful and helpful responses to the dad who is stressing out about encouraging his daughter to walk away from an expensive acceptance from Boston College and instead trot off this fall to the honors college at the University of Pittsburgh. I think it’s safe to say that there was an overriding consensus that...

July 1, 2013

I received this email over the weekend from an anxious father that I wanted to share with you. The dad is having second thoughts about the school that he pressured his daughter to attend. He is already contemplating his daughter transferring next year to a different school. I think his story could generate some interesting discussions about rankings, price, graduate...

June 7, 2013

When students are shopping for colleges, admission representatives typically urge them to ignore the sticker price. Here’s what these college reps routinely say:  We’ve got lots of financial aid and scholarships. Just APPLY! I was reminded of why applying blind is such a reckless strategy when a mom contacted me after her husband, who is a financial advisor, heard me...

May 29, 2013

Today I’m passing along an interesting list that I pulled from the website of Harvard’s law school. The list that you see below includes the 161 colleges and universities where members of the law school’s Class of 2015 received their bachelor’s degrees. Harvard’s law school accepted 865 applicants out of a pool of 5,438 for an acceptance rate of 15.9%....

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...

February 26, 2013

Where do the best college professors teach? This is an important question, particularly when you consider that traditional college professors are disappearing. Less than one out of three teachers on college campuses today are tenured or on the tenured track. Most college students today are being taught primarily by graduate students and part-time faculty. (See my post below about why...

February 6, 2013

The steady trickle of colleges and universities that have admitted to fudging the figures that they send to U.S. News & World Report could end up changing the college rankings submission rules. In an interview published today in Inside Higher Ed, Brian Kelly, the editor and chief content officer at U.S. News, said that the college rankings giant is considering...