The College Solutions Blog

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

Grades
January 4, 2010

Can This Teenager Win a College Scholarship?

I wanted to share with you an email that I received last night from a high school freshman, who spent her Christmas break stressing out: Dear Lynn, I am a freshman in high school, and I am enrolled in all advanced placement classes. For the first marking period, I received all B’s and one A+. My second marking period grades...
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December 11, 2009

The Great SAT and ACT Test Debate

If your teenager bombs on the SAT or ACT, you don’t need to despair. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts on my college blog, students can get into hundreds of schools even if they withhold their SAT or ACT test scores. See links below to some of these posts. Today I want to draw your attention to a SAT and...
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November 19, 2009

How Many High School Students Are Ready for College?

Are high school students ready for college? Many of them aren’t. According to ACT Inc., only 23% of recent high school graduates, who took the ACT test, were prepared for college. When the ACT examined its latest crop of statistics, the test maker concluded that less than one in four high school graduates was academically prepared in these four key...
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November 11, 2009

Don't Write Like a College Professor

Do you write like a college professor? If you do, rid yourself of the habit. College graduates who write like their college professors could find their job search even harder. The business world favors employees who can write simple, declarative sentences. In contrast, college professors are masters at obfuscation. They write stilted prose. They embrace words with five or six...
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October 11, 2009

The Price of High School Success

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...
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September 15, 2009

Finding the Best Colleges

What are the best colleges in America? Not so fast with your answer. The best colleges aren’t always the ones that enjoy the biggest, shiniest name brands and monopolize the rankings. So how do you find the colleges and universities that do a fantastic — if unheralded — job of educating students? You’re going to have to dig a little...
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September 13, 2009

The Secrets of Succeeding in College

The biggest buzz last week in the higher-ed world was the release of a serious tome entitled, Crossing the Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities. The book, which was co-authored by William G. Bowen, a former Princeton president, and two other academics is chock-a-block full of stats and astute observations about why many students manage to graduate from college,...
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August 4, 2009

How to Get Into the Ivy League: Be a Legacy

How do you get into the Ivy League?  Be a legacy applicant. A friend of my blog, Lee Bierer, an education columnist for the Charlotte Observer and an independent college counselor, writes about Ivy League legacy chances in her latest column. Here’s where you can check out her take on Ivy League admissions for legacies. It’s clear that legacies enjoy...
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May 11, 2009

Cutting the Cost of College With Better Grades

One morning at a breakfast chat with parents at my son’s high school, the principal mentioned that he is always amazed at how few students at the end of each semester ask teachers how they might improve their grades. It should be a no brainer, the principal suggested, for students to ask their teachers if they can do extra credit...
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February 28, 2009

Runaway GPAs

Earlier this month I wrote a blog post that shared a wild story about my son’s precalculus teacher. When the teacher said no late assignments, he meant it. A cancer patient who was taking his class nearly died from the wrong dose of chemotherapy, but the teacher still wouldn’t accept her late paper. I think there are many more teachers...
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