The College Solutions Blog

January 24, 2012

Now that we’re in the thick of FAFSA season, I wanted to answer some questions on my college blog that I’ve been getting about financial aid forms. If you have your own questions, please leave them in the comment box below. Lynn O. Mom’s question: Try as I might I still can’t get my hands around the whole financial aid...

August 3, 2011

How do colleges decide which teenagers will win their merit scholarships? And, just as importantly, how do schools determine how much each scholarship winner will receive. I was excited to gain some insight into that question yesterday when I talked to Jonathan Burdick, the undergraduate admissions and financial aid director at the University of Rochester. After the latest admission season...

July 20, 2011

The majority of families end up borrowing for college. But when parents and teenagers talk about how they are going to divide up that responsibility, they rarely possess a good idea of what this debt burden is going to mean for them when the bills come due. That’s why I’m recommending a  tool from SimpleTuition, an aggregator of private student...

March 16, 2011

My husband and I reached a milestone yesterday. We made our last payment for our daughter’s bachelors degree. Caitlin is graduating from Juniata College in May and we’ve managed to pay for her degree — she double majored in business and Spanish — without taking out loans.  I should have bought a bottle of champagne to celebrate, but my husband...

March 2, 2011

In my last post, I explained what kind of federal financial assistance you might find in a financial aid award.  Here it is: Deciperhing a Financial Aid Package Today, I’m going to cover the types of college grants that parents typically find in a student financial aid letter. College Grants Many families believe that the biggest source of cash is...

February 6, 2011

I wrote this post for my college blog over at US News & World Report last week. I wanted to share it with you….. Winning private college scholarships can certainly help make college more affordable, but you need to know the realities of competing for college cash. A handy resource to turn to is a new book, Secrets to Winning...

December 29, 2010

Today I want to share a piece, which originally ran in the Washington Post, that was written by Dean P. Skarlis, who  is president of The College Advisor of New York in Albany. I liked what Skarlis had to say so much about today’s college admission climate that I asked if I could share it with you. According to the...

November 28, 2010

Is your EFC too high? I have been hearing from families of high school seniors who have calculated their preliminary EFC or Expected Family Contribution and are now panicking. They can’t believe how high their EFC is. Your EFC can provide a decent idea of what a college will assume you could pay for one year of college. If you...

October 28, 2010

I’ve gotten questions lately from parents whose children are being recruited by college coaches. I wanted to share the questions because it might help other families who are or will be navigating the Byzantine world of college athletics. I talked to Karen Weaver, my go-to-expert on college athletics. Weaver is the director of athletics at a Penn State campus and...

October 18, 2010

I am sure that I ticked off a fair number of high school counselors yesterday when I wrote this post: Why High School Counselors Don’t Know Much About College I wanted to follow up with a list of things that the typical high school counselors doesn’t know. This list could have been much longer, but since people are impatient on...