The College Solutions Blog

January 4, 2018

College price tags are meaningless. Most students do not pay full tuition price for college. That said, paying attention to college prices can be extremely helpful in making college more affordable. Here’s a simple example: Getting a $20,000-a-year merit scholarship from a school that has a published price of $45,000 will obviously make a college much more affordable than receiving...

October 16, 2017

It’s financial aid season! If you have a child heading to college next fall, you can complete the Free Application for Federal Financial Aid (FAFSA) or the CSS Profile now! Whether you’re filing this year or are curious about what lies ahead, I have written two helpful articles that explore important financial aid topics. (I wrote both of these articles...

September 18, 2017

Here is what typically happens during college admission season: Students apply to whatever colleges they want without having any clue about whether these schools will give them grants and/or scholarships. Parents are often nervously okay with their children disregarding price when finalizing their lists. The attitude of these moms and dads can be summed up this way:  Go ahead and...

July 9, 2017

Over the past few days I had 1,300 people listen live to my webinar that revealed eight insider secrets that colleges aren’t eager to share, but that you need to know to find good college matches and shrink your college costs. When you start looking for colleges, you need to be on guard just as you would walking onto a...

June 15, 2017

I am a huge supporter of families throwing a wider net when looking for colleges. I’m not going to lie, however, I do get push back from skeptical parents. Here is one of the questions that I hear from these folks: What if a promising college is on the verge of going belly up? Even though it’s rarely going to...

May 16, 2017

College sticker prices are often meaningless because most students at state and private universities don’t pay it. Published prices, however, can be a helpful starting point when exploring what kind of price break, in the form of scholarship and grants, your child might get at a particular institution. Here’s an example: Your teenager receives a $15,000 annual merit award at...

May 8, 2017

Last month I heard from many parents agonizing about whether to let their teenagers attend their dream colleges. These dream colleges were inevitably highly selective to elite universities which cost $65,000 to $70,000 a year! I don’t believe any college or universities is worth paying that kind of money! My most recent blog post, which originally ran in 2014, focused...

April 11, 2017

Financial aid awards are often confusing. I believe many colleges and universities intentionally make financial aid awards hard to decipher to trick families into thinking that their institutions are being generous even when they aren’t. Obfuscation is an effective way to keep parents off balance. Since we are heading into the season when students will be receiving their financial aid...

March 28, 2017

This is the time of year when parents and teenagers stress about their college choices. Parents whose children have expensive collegiate tastes can struggle with the some variation of the following question: Should they spend obscene amounts of money so their children can attend their dream school or should they insist that their children stick with more reasonably priced alternatives?...

January 20, 2017

During the past week, I shared Five Winning College Strategies during a webinar that attracted more than 1,000 viewers. If you missed the webinar, which I offered on four different dates, you can still listen to the replay for a limited time period. Here is the link to Five Winning College Strategies to Finding Great Schools and Cutting Their Price....