The College Solutions Blog

June 13, 2014

A month after he graduated from Beloit College with a degree in mathematics, my son Ben is taking his first step towards becoming a high school math teacher. He starts his Denver Teacher Residency program Monday through a collaborative effort between the University of Denver and the Denver Public Schools. Ben will be taking classes for the next year at...

May 30, 2014

I’ve always felt that parents and teenagers spend too much time worrying about getting into college. I wish teenagers, in particular, diverted some of their energy into making sure that their college years will be successful. For everybody who agrees with me that the latter goal is vastly more important, I want to recommend a book, The Thinking Student’s Guide...

May 21, 2014

My son Ben graduated from Beloit College on Sunday. With 277 other seniors, Ben received his diploma on a beautiful spring day at this liberal arts college in Beloit, WI, which he considered his home for four years. This native San Diegan left nearly four years ago to move to a state where he had no connections, no relatives, no...

May 19, 2014

Today I’m sharing a guest post that explains some excellent, but overlooked options for students who are interested in attending a music conservatory or an art and design school, which are often extremely expensive options with poor financial aid. The author is Stuart Nachbar, who is president of EducatedQuest.com, a college admissions blog and guide to some of the best...

May 8, 2014

A new survey conducted by Gallup and Purdue University indicates that the type of institution that college graduates attend matters less to their future happiness at home and work than the experiences they have in college. I felt vindicated when I saw the Gallup results because I’ve been saying for years that what’s most important is not where you go...

March 19, 2014

Want to know why you can’t obtain the average salary figures for graduates of a particular school? You can direct much of the blame to powerful lobbyists for the nation’s private, nonprofit colleges and universities. That’s the conclusion of a damning new study, which was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, that the New America Foundation released this...

March 14, 2014

When searching for colleges, families should be able to know if the graduates at a particular school have been able to find jobs. And preferably good-paying jobs. As I’ve mentioned before on this college blog, it’s almost impossible to find meaningful numbers because the employment statistics that college reps eagerly recite, with few exceptions,  are almost always bogus. (See previous...

February 26, 2014

A new Gallup survey that polled business leaders on higher-education issues revealed that executives hold a low opinion of the ability of colleges to prepare students for the workplace. American adults also  believe just as strongly that higher-ed institutions are not readying students for employment. According to the survey, which was conducted in partnership with the Lumina Foundation, only 11%...

February 13, 2014

The College Board released its latest annual AP report this week. You can also see the entire report here: 10th Annual AP Report to the Nation AP classes are a creature of the College Board so keep in mind that the organization will always spin the AP statistics in a positive way in its report. One of the great unresolved...

February 7, 2014

Teenagers often pick college major without knowing much  about what they entail or whether they can handle the work. I was thinking about this today when I read a new report from ACT Inc., entitled, The Condition of STEM 2013. The report shared statistics on the number of high school students in the 2013 graduating class, who were interested in...