The College Solutions Blog

July 3, 2012

Yesterday I wrote a post about a teenager with a 3.4 GPA who failed to capture a scholarship from any of the schools where he applied. This is hard to do when you consider that two-thirds of college student don’t pay the sticker price for college. If you missed yesterday’s post, here it is:  Getting Stiffed by Colleges After reading...

March 30, 2012

College price tags are meaningless. If you’ve spent much time on my college blog you already appreciate that these numbers don’t mean anything, but most families don’t. About two thirds of students attending state and private schools receive scholarships or grants and the number rises to about 88% at private institutions, which have to offer more discounts for students to...

December 15, 2011

There are many websites that you can research the financial aid practices of individual schools. Today I’m going to focus on an especially helpful site — the federal College Navigator. The College Navigator is not flashy, but it contains incredible tools that tap into the US Department of Education’s vast college database. The College Navigator provides information on individual schools...

November 8, 2011

Are colleges and universities playing hide and seek with their net price calculators? As I’ve mentioned in the previous posts below, net price calculators can be extremely valuable tools for families wondering what a specific college will cost their families. I don’t think anyone should be applying to schools unless they have used these college cost calculators in advance. College...

October 14, 2011

I heard from a mom this week, who is worried about some of the schools her daughter has begun applying to. I wanted to share what the mother wrote: As I watch my daughter start her college applications, I’m cringing inside because she’s wanting to apply to out of state public schools such as UCLA, Georgia Tech and Purdue. Although...

September 11, 2011

Have you tried out any college cost calculators yet? If you haven’t, I’d urge to to get started. I experimented with some net price calculators recently and I wanted to share my experience. The purpose of these so-called net price calculators is to help you determine how much a college is going to cost your family by generating a personalized...

September 8, 2011

If you missed it, I wrote a post earlier in the week about applying early decision to colleges: The Odds of Applying Early Decision I assumed this post would lead to more questions on this issue and sure enough I got an email from a mom with a question that I thought was worth sharing with you. Here is what...

July 26, 2011

If you’ve spent much time on my college blog, you already know that published college price tags are meaningless. Most students receive some type of price break, thanks to federal or state grants and/or discounts from the schools themselves. What is far more important than a sticker price is a school’s net price. It’s All About the Net Price A...

July 15, 2011

My last post focused on net price calculators that colleges and universities must have installed on their websites by late October. If you missed it, here it is: A New Way to Add Up the Cost of College Today, I want to share a nifty online tool from COLLEGEdata that can help you get a sense of how much a...

February 17, 2011

There are many websites that you can research the financial aid practices of individual schools. Today I’m going to focus on an especially helpful site — the federal College Navigator. The College Navigator is not flashy, but it contains incredible tools that tap into the US Department of Education’s vast college database. The College Navigator provides information on individual schools...