The College Solutions Blog

April 14, 2014

Don’t become a victim of the college process like the angry mom you’ll read about below! A highly effective way to make college more affordable is to enroll in my upcoming course, The College Cost Lab. You can learn more about the class and enroll here. Lynn O’Shaughnessy I am sharing with you today an angry comment sent to me...

December 10, 2013

FAFSA season is fast approaching, which always brings questions about who should complete this federal financial aid application. For the 2014-2015 school, year, the Department of Education has issued new rules impacting some parents about who should be completing the FAFSA. Here is a rundown of what you need to know: Traditional Married Couples If you are part of a...

October 28, 2013

If your family will need to depend on financial aid to attend college, your best bet is to find a school that will offer an excellent financial aid package to your child. A great way to assess the generosity of any school is to look at the percentage of financial need it typically meets for its students. Teenagers, who earn...

September 17, 2013

Should I Apply for Financial Aid? Here’s a variation of a question that I always get during admission season: Someone told me yesterday that it’s better to answer “No” to the “Do you intend to apply for need based financial aid” question on the Common Application. My son has already submitted his applications and he answered “yes” to that question...

August 26, 2013

How can you find the most generous colleges? The ones that meet 100% of financial need or close to it? And what about the schools that provide merit scholarships for affluent students who don’t qualify for need-based aid? How can you find schools that provide a large number of these scholarships? You can find the answers to those questions by...

August 16, 2013

I recently received an email from a single mom who is stressed out about how she is going to afford college. I wanted to share her email and solicit suggestions from you. I have my own ideas, but I’ll hold onto them for the next post. I always love to read the suggestions from my readers so if you have...

August 14, 2013

Winning private college scholarships can certainly help make college more affordable, but you need to know the realities of competing for this college cash. Before you start hunting for private college scholarships, here are nine facts about these awards that you need to know: 1. Private scholarships aren’t the biggest source of college cash. I suspect most families believe that...

May 22, 2013

How much do college admission reps know about financial aid? Many of them know next to nothing. I was reminded of this reality this week when I was attending the annual conference of the Western Association for College Admission Counseling in Costa Mesa, CA. This is a group that represents colleges, as well as high school counselors and independent college...

March 27, 2013

Many colleges do a horrible job of presenting their financial aid awards in an easy-to-understand way.  As I’ve been explaining in my last two posts, I believe this is largely intentional: What’s Wrong With This Financial Aid Letter Evaluating a Financial Aid Award Recognizing this shameful behavior, the federal government has created a financial aid template called the Shopping Sheet....

March 19, 2013

What does the financial aid look like for a school that is generous? In my last post, I illustrated what a stingy university looks like using statistics that you can find on the College Board. If you missed the post, here it is: Is This University Stingy? Today I’m going to use the same tools to illustrate what a school...