The College Solutions Blog

Valuable insights from Lynn O’Shaughnessy
a nationally recognized college expert.

USC
Featured image for “Elite Colleges, Entitled Teens and Guilted Parents”
April 6, 2019

Elite Colleges, Entitled Teens and Guilted Parents

The college admission season is winding down at this time of year except for this part: Parents are stressing about how they’re going to pay for the college that their children want to attend. Spring is when I hear from parents who are being guilted by their children to spend dangerously more than they should for a brand name research...
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Featured image for “College Admission Scandal: Symptom of a Larger Problem”
March 15, 2019

College Admission Scandal: Symptom of a Larger Problem

The college admission scandal that saturated the press this week made me think of a disturbing anecdote, which I heard last month, that blew my mind. I want to emphasize that shocking me is tough to do since covering the higher-ed industry – and it is very much an industry – has made me quite cynical and disgusted about how...
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January 11, 2012

California Teen Getting Grief for Liking Southern Universities

I received an email yesterday from a mom in Southern California, whose daughter Nicole is getting grief about the Southern universities that she has applied to.  Karen’s email raises a lot of interesting issues including preconceived notions about schools, the tendency of some parent(s) to push kids to attend their alma mater or state schools and a lack of understanding...
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September 7, 2011

6 Ways Colleges Are Behaving Badly

For many years I was a financial journalist and in that role I became extremely cynical about how Wall Street and the rest of the financial industry operated. After I switched  to writing about the higher-ed world, I became just as cynical about the practices of colleges and universities. I bring this up today because of a report just released...
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January 8, 2011

Do You Need to Go to Film School?

If you want to get into the movie industry, do you need to go to film school? That’s what I was wondering after two stressed dads, within the space a few days, emailed me about how they are going to pay for their teenagers’ dreams to attend a film school. Film schools tend to be located in extremely expensive universities...
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December 8, 2010

How Will My Home Equity Impact Financial Aid?

I’ve been getting emails about home equity and financial aid. Consequently, I decided to run a college blog post that I wrote last year on the topic: Before the housing bubble burst, plenty of parents worried that their home equity was going to scotch any chance of receiving college financial aid. Even in this environment, it’s still going to be...
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