The College Solutions Blog

December 10, 2009

This is the time for parents of high school seniors to start thinking about applying for financial aid. I was reminded of that today when the college counselor at my son’s high school asked me to talk to his advisory group about the FAFSA and the CSS Financial Aid Profile. Just about everybody in the room had heard of the...

December 1, 2009

Will colleges hand out more college scholarships and financial aid for the latest crop of high school seniors? Last year private colleges and universities, in particular, dug deeper and increased the amount of money they awarded through college financial aid and merit scholarships. Last time I checked, the financial misery index is still alarming, but colleges might not be as...

November 24, 2009

I’m going to be surprised if the soaring level of college student loan debt doesn’t become a political issue. The number of student loan defaults and delinquencies are rising. The latest statistics on student loan delinquencies are shocking.  The Student Lending Analytics Blog just crunched the Federal Reserve numbers on student loan delinquencies and came up with these dreary stats: More...

November 18, 2009

Wondering if you should apply for financial aid. Here’s the answer: Yes.  You should file for financial aid. During the past few hours, I heard that advice over and over. I was on the phone for a good part of the day interviewing financial aid experts for a story about the upcoming changes to the FAFSA or Free Application for...

November 8, 2009

When my daughter Caitlin was exploring colleges a few years ago, I worried that she would have to be more accomplished than the boys she was competing against to boost her college admission chances. As you’ll read in my college blog post for CBSMoneyWatch.com, Are Colleges Discriminating Against Girls, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is investigating whether private liberal...

November 3, 2009

Today I’ve invited Kristin White, an author and independent college counselor, to share with us some surprising facts about a growing phenomenon: the gap year.  Kristin wrote a new book on the subject that’s entitled, The Complete Guide to the Gap Year: The Best Things To Do Between High School and College. The gap year is a hot topic right...

October 18, 2009

As usual, I’m sharing with you the posts that I wrote for my college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com last week.  It was challenging for me to get them done because my son and I were traveling in the Midwest looking at colleges for the last time. Here are my three most recent posts: Want to Succeed in Business? Play Poker. I’m...

October 7, 2009

A high school counselor in Colombia asked me today how she could find American colleges that provide financial aid for international students who want to study in the United States. Actually, there are many schools that provide need-based aid to international students interested in American colleges and universities. Every year a member of the Overseas Association for College Admission Counseling...

September 7, 2009

In the last few days, I’ve been working on an assignment about college rankings — when it’s published I’ll be sure to link to the article. Today, however, I thought I’d provide links to some helpful college lists courtesy of US News & World Report. Colleges Giving the Most Merit Scholarships One question that I get asked frequently is which...

September 2, 2009

All week I’ve been sharing great tools to research colleges. Today I want to feature the federal College Navigator. The College Navigator is a dull-looking website, but it contains incredible tools that tap into a vast college database that the U.S. Department of Education maintains. To illustrate what College Navigator can do, I’m using as an example Ohio State University,...