The College Solutions Blog

May 21, 2012

What is the best way to ace your teenager’s final exams? This is a timely question as millions of high school students are getting ready to take their final exams. You might assume that reading textbooks and notes over and over again is the best way to study, but researchers from Purdue and Washington University insist that it’s not the...

January 10, 2012

With crazy amounts of psychic energy being spent on getting teenagers into college, too many students and their parents think getting admitted is the hard part of the college process.  Actually, it’s not. Squeezing as much value out of the college experience once you’re a student is far more important. Unfortunately, however,  many students are graduating from college without learning...

December 20, 2011

What is the best way to ace your final exams? This is a timely question as millions of high school and college students are taking their final exams. You might assume that reading textbooks and notes over and over again is the best way to study, but researchers from Purdue and Washington University insist that it’s not the best approach....

December 19, 2011

Last week our son Ben called the house wanting to know if we wanted to Skype. We usually call him every Sunday to find out how he’s doing so whenever he contacts us it’s a big surprise. His primary reason for calling was to share with us how hard he was studying for his math final exam. He ended up...

November 29, 2011

I’ve often wondered why colleges and universities are so fixated on admitting students with extremely high SAT or ACT scores. Some of these teenagers only excel at taking tests and earning top grades, which can lead to awfully uninspiring young adults. I’ve heard admission folks privately lament that kids with high test scores can be duds.  If I was an...

October 20, 2011

The college degree is the only game in town. At least that’s the way it’s been for a very long time. Most Americans believe they need a college degree to succeed professionally and the statistics certainly bear this out. College graduates earn considerably more during their careers. Among Americans ages 25 to 32, for instance, women and men with college...

October 4, 2011

A website that focuses on college issues recently asked me a few questions that parents and teenagers commonly ask or wonder about. I decided to share the questions and my answers with you today. Here goes: At what stage should you prepare for college? Teenagers can start preparing for college at the beginning of high school — really before that...

September 15, 2011

The College Board released its latest SAT results this week and the scores were underwhelming. The average SAT reading score reached its lowest point in nearly four decades. The combined reading, math and writing score of 1500 out of a possible 2400 was six points below 2010’s results and 18 points off 2006. If you’re wondering how your teenager compared...

July 21, 2011

Interested in some summer reading? I’ve got bookcases packed with college books in my home office. In this YouTube video, however, I share some of my favorite books about college. College Workshop I’ll be giving the final college workshop this Saturday (July 23) in a summer series for parents and teenagers at the University of California, San Diego. If you’d...

June 9, 2011

Earlier this year, I wrote a couple of posts about this reality:  many students are graduating from college without absorbing much of an education. From a parent’s perspective that’s a lot of wasted money. And, of course, there are serious ramifications for students who have spent their college years living in a Bud Lite commercial. Here are the two posts:...