The College Solutions Blog

July 26, 2010

In my last blog post I complained that too many high school students pick schools based primarily on size. And most of these students only want to look at schools that are large. Here is where I vented: My Pet Peeve: Picking Colleges by Size What’s more important, I argued, is a school’s mission. Today, I want to explore a...

March 12, 2010

The University of California and the Cal State universities are in serious financial trouble. This reality is finally resonating with teenagers, which is why more of them have applied outside the state instead of assuming that their Cal State or UC admission applications will be successful. With the UC And Cal State schools experiencing their biggest financial crisis ever, the...

December 28, 2009

Want to attend a public university outside your state? Often the out-of-state tuition costs are far greater at state universities, which naturally prefer to keep the costs lowest for their own residents. You can, however, find public universities willing to cut their state tuition for outsiders. Here are five ways to cut the costs of attending a public university outside...

November 22, 2009

Students at campuses across the University of California system rioted last week after the Board of Regents voted to increase undergraduate tuition by 32% next year. You can see video of the fee hike protest at UCLA here. I want to play devil’s advocate and suggest that tuition hikes at UCLA and the other UC campuses is a good thing....

October 23, 2009

I’m exhausted today so it’s hard to get motivated to write something for my college blog. I gave four lengthy speeches at college fairs around San Diego on three consecutive nights this week. During the past few days, I also spent a lot of time at High Tech High, which is my son’s school, talking with college admission representatives and...

October 11, 2009

Last week I was talking to the college counselor at my son’s high school about research findings that suggest that Asian students face much greater odds in getting into Ivy League and other elite institutions. During our conversation, the counselor took a hardback from his book-lined room and suggested I read it. School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a...

July 24, 2009

Will the financial crisis that colleges and universities are experiencing lead to cannabalism? I started wondering that when I heard that most of the department chairs at the University of California, San Diego, wrote a crazy letter recently to the president of the 10-campus UC system. Twenty one out of 28 department chairs suggested that Board of Regents consider killing...

July 13, 2009

If you have a child who is attending — or hopes to attend — a school in the University of California or California State University systems, these are scary times. Tuition at the 23 Cal State schools is expected to jump by 30% for the fall semester. Tuition at the University of California campuses will increase more than 9%. Students...

April 5, 2009

Some high schools prepare teenagers for college better than others. Duh. But here’s something that many parents in California don’t realize. Sending your child to a top high school could reduce their chances of getting into UCLA or Berkeley. During the past couple of weeks, I’ve run into parents who are mystified and angry that their teenagers didn’t get into...

April 1, 2009

While everyone likes to gripe about the cost of college, in the world of state flagship universities true bargains exist. UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley, are two of them. The tuition at each of those schools is below $7,000. In comparison, Harvard’s tuition is more than $36,000. The protests against annual rises at state institutions, however, has masked...