I wanted to wish everyone who visits my college blog a happy holiday.

Unless you are a high school senior or the parent of one, I’d suggest this is an excellent time to forget about college for a week. That’s what I intend to do, which is why I won’t be writing any more blog posts until 2013.

I am grateful that my son Ben returned safely from his semester abroad in Hungary. The mathematics program that brought him to Budapest was a grueling one, but Ben said he was glad he went for two main reasons.  While in the program, he said he developed a different way to view mathematics and he also became great friends with Mark, his roommate, who is a junior in Reed College. Mark plans to visit Ben at Beloit College this spring.

I thought I’d share a few photos that I took this weekend when family and friends gathered for our yearly attempt to make gingerbread houses. Actually they are graham cracker houses since the year that I made the actual gingerbread, the houses were a flop.

Here is Ben with his two oldest friends — one from preschool and the other from grade school. Paloma attends Mount Holyoke College and Nathan attends Carleton College and they are both very happy with their schools. And I am, of course, pleased that they decided to attend liberal arts colleges! My best friend (Paloma’s mom) is in the background.

 Here is a picture of my daughter Caitlin and her boyfriend Nick, who bucked tradition and built a robot instead. He is getting his PhD in robotics/engineering at UCSD so everybody thought his choice was cute.

Here is everyone posing for a photo booth shoot, including my husband who didn’t make a gingerbread house because he was busy sanding his latest wooden trout. He starts with a block of redwood at Home Depot and turns it into an amazing fish. They are highly coveted as gifts and one of Bruce’s old classmates from UC Berkeley is getting one for Christmas.

Here is my favorite trout that my husband carved and painted earlier in 2012. Over the years, Bruce had gotten increasingly better. You can see an older speciman sitting on a post in our front yard.

Happy holidays everyone! I will be back in 2013!

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of the second edition of The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price.

With Thanksgiving just one day away, I want to express my deep gratitude for all of you who spend time on my college blog. I appreciate each of you and especially the loyal visitors who stop by regularly. I want to give a special shout out to all of you!

The number of visitors to my blog continues to climb with teenagers as well as parents (moms outnumber dads). I know this because of Google Analytics, which I check a few times a week.

One out of four of my visitors are from California, which isn’t too surprising since it’s the biggest state and it’s also where I live (San Diego). Here are the states that were responsible for my biggest traffic numbers in the last month.

When measured by metropolitan areas, New York City residents are my biggest supporters followed by folks in San Diego and Chicago.

Why Write About College?

Google Analytics can’t measure my extreme gratitude for being allowed the freedom to pursue one of my intellectual passions, which is covering the higher-ed world.  I became intrigued by the topic back in 2005 when my daughter was a sophomore in high school. I realized  before Caitlin did that she wasn’t going to get into the University of California, Berkeley, because her class rank wasn’t quite high enough.

Like a lot of kids in California, Caitlin had dreamed about attending this school (her dad earned his undergrad degree in English literature there) or one of the other premiere UC campuses because that’s what smart kids in this state do. Sadly most teens don’t appreciate all the options they really have.

Caitlin started considering private schools after someone recommended Colleges That Change Lives, which is a wonderful book about the beauty of liberal arts colleges.

Switching Gears

I was a financial journalist at the time and I decided to explore who gets money for college and whether Caitlin would qualify for some of it.  I started producing stories on college issues for magazines such as Money Magazine, BusinessWeek, Consumer Reports  and other publications that I wrote for as a financial journalist. What I learned helped us find lovely schools, which were less expensive than I had originally feared for both Caitlin, who graduated in 2011 from Juniata College, and my son Ben, who is a junior at Beloit College.

What My Kids are Doing

I am also grateful that Caitlin beat the odds after graduation and found a great social media/marketing job at Rokenbok, a wonderful toy company in San Diego. In 2012 Google cited Rokenbok as one of a dozen or so small businesses in the country using innovative YouTube strategies. If you click on this link, you’ll see the YouTube photo of the awardees including  my daughter (wearing a green shirt), who were flown up to Google headquarters for a couple of fun days. Here is a post about Caitlin journey in getting a job:

5 Secrets to Getting a Job After College

Caitlin also launched a Kickstarter project recently and is creating iPhone cases, as well as prints and canvases based on her own designs, as well as those of her brother’s.  I think of Caitlin (Spanish major) whenever I hear someone complain that studying the liberal arts is a deadend!

I am also happy that my son Ben, my other liberal arts major (mathematics and studio arts), is flourishing in college. Ben, a junior, loves Beloit College and began fretting last year about having to leave the school when he graduates in 2014.

Ben has spent this semester studying in Budapest in a tough-as-nails math program and I suspect that he and the friends he has made among the math majors there are studying much harder than the vast majority of students who study abroad. One day he and his roommate from Reed College spent nine hours talking about one of their math classes! I am particularly grateful that Ben got to visit Dachau, the German concentration camp.

Finishing the book

I am also thankful that the second edition of  my book, The  College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price, was released this year. (Holiday gift idea??)

I was quite happy when I finished the book in the spring and could spend an entire therapeutic day cleaning my office and boxing up my notes and printouts. In case you are wondering, the photo on the book cover, which I picked out and lobbied for, is of Rhodes College,  in Memphis. I worked at the newspaper in Memphis after graduating from j-school  at Mizzou so I know first hand of the campus’s beauty.

My Next Goal

With the book done, I plan to continue blogging, but my big goal for  2013 is to explore ways that I can reach out to more people. My dream would be to develop educational programs to train financial advisers and high school counselors who should be the ones  helping families make smart college choices.

I have zero interest in being a college consultant myself, but I love to stand up in front of an audience and share what I know.

Happy Thanksgiving

Finally, everyone who has emailed me with a personal story about how my work played some role in finding a great college and paying for it, I thank you for sharing your journey.  I hope every one has a Happy Thanksgiving!

Beware colleges’ job placement claims

Career Services Questions to Ask

1.  Are career services and experiential learning separate  offices at your university or do they work together?

Career centers will usually handle the non-academic aspects of finding an internship or other experiential opportunity. They will manage the employer contact database and coordinate any meetings between the student and faculty involved in approving the student’s assignment as well as the academic credit for the position. They will also vet any legal agreements between the student, the school and the employer. These are to help ensure that the student has a relevant work experience; too often employers used interns as “go-fers.”

2. When does career services first engage students? Is it to help them choose a major?

More and more the career services office has become involved in “University 101″ classes, working with the faculty instructor and the student peer mentor to include units on resume preparation and/or research on careers and employers. Some schools have bought packages such as FOCUS where a student may do an online search by major for jobs or a search of careers for majors.

3.  How many employers come to campus each year through job fairs and on-campus interviewing?

The number of fairs is more important, because fairs are organized for internships as well as full-time jobs by major. A large state university will typically host job fairs for business/liberal arts, engineering, health care, government/non-profit and education. Other schools also have job fairs through the major departments where the faculty are very well connected. For example, the University of Rhode Island’s College of Pharmacy handles a job fair for the BS in Pharmaceutical Sciences and their PharmD students.

4.  What majors are most sought by employers?

I ask this because I want to know how the employers know of the school. For example, Purdue, where I just visited is well known to recruiters for engineering, computer science and agriculture within the Fortune 500 and consulting forms. The undergraduate business program is a “management” degree that has been popular with manufacturing firms for decades. Purdue may be a better school for a student who is interested in working for a consumer products company than, for example, Indiana, which has aggressively targeted corporate finance and investment banking positions.

5.  What cities/states do most employers come from? Does this match with student interest in terms of places where they would like to work?

State schools such as Indiana, Miami (OH), New Hampshire, Penn State, Purdue, Rhode Island and West Virginia now attract at least 30 percent of their students from outside their state. Sometimes, especially if they come from California or New York, students will want to return home to work. It helps parents to know if the career services office has connections or has worked with alumni in those cities. Sometimes schools will also collaborate on live or virtual employment events in popular cities. The Big East schools, for example, host a live career fair in New York City in conjunction with the Big East basketball tournament.

6. How many jobs were posted last year?

I am more interested in a trend, whether the number of jobs posted has gone up or down, as well as the numbers for internships and full-time jobs, if the school separates them. At a good school the volume should go up, if for nothing else because the career center has made it easy for employers to register and post online for no charge. In the past many schools referred employers to a service called JobTrak that charged to type their jobs and shared revenues with the school.

7. What share of the students continue their education vs. accepting employment?

This has become more important because more career centers handle graduate and professional school advising or work closely with others who do.

8.  What do employers like most about your students?

I’m curious to know what the employers report in a survey as opposed to anecdotes. To be honest, I get more anecdotes. But the appearance of the office and how they manage the interview rooms (for larger schools) tells a lot.

9. What does your office offer them that comparable schools do not?

Career service directors at the larger schools have placed more emphasis on coordination to help the employer get more from their campus visits. While interview schedules may be set across different schools, there is more care taken to help the employer complete all interviews for all positions over a period of two or three days as opposed to several repeat visits.

10. Is your school a part of jobs networks or job fairs in partnership with other schools?

Both large and small schools share jobs across regions, states or sports conferences. Networks are more beneficial for smaller schools that cannot fill on-campus interview schedules on their own and/or do not have a large alumni base to work with. Events can be live, for example, a job fair at a conference center in a large city where the students want to work, or they may be online. “Last chance” events where employers are still seeking to fill positions after the end of March, are popular for online platforms.

This is the time of year when parents are stressing about paying for their child’s college tab. I’ve been hearing from parents who haven’t been able to borrow enough for college. I thought I’d share one of these emails.

A Mom’s Dilemma

Here is the mom’s note:

I would like to know what to do if you don’t qualify for a Parent PLUS loan?

Our second son is now in college, and we had quite a bit of money saved for their college (over $60,000, which is phenomenal for people with our early salaries), but I lost my job in 2009 and that put us into a financial pickle. We were able to pay for our oldest son’s first two years of college and our second son’s first year, but we are in the position now where we don’t have enough saved for his entire tuition and need to borrow – but we don’t qualify!

We earn about $150,000 per year, own our house and another house with NO MORTGAGE on it, and STILL cannot get a $9700 loan! We have tried EVERYWHERE. Any suggestions?

By the way – I wasn’t aware that we had any ‘issues’ on our credit. I just purchased a vehicle in March of this year after my car died and I got a 0% interest rate. How is it that you can borrow money to buy a vehicle but cannot borrow money for your child’s education? We are paying for him an apartment near campus and books out of pocket. We are just $9700 short.

 A Borrowing Solution

Before I share a potential solution to this family’s problem, I want to explain what a Parent PLUS Loan is.

The PLUS Loan allows parents to borrow enough to meet the cost of a school’s attendance, which is determined by the college, that isn’t covered by their child’s financial aid package. There is no maximum borrowing limit. Considering how low inflation has been for years, the terms on the PLUS Loan are pricey. The interest rate is 7.9% and there is an additional 4% fee on the loan amount.

You can learn more about the PLUS by reading one of my previous posts:

How Parents Can Borrow for College

Since the mom and her husband didn’t qualify for a PLUS, their child can borrow more via a federal Stafford Loan. A freshman can borrow up to $9,500 via a Stafford of which no more than $3,500 can be a subsidized Stafford. A sophomore, junior or senior can borrow $12,500 a year of which $5,500 can be subsidized.

Student who borrow through a subsidized Stafford do not have to pay the interest that accrues while they are still in school (the federal government covers it) and the interest rate (at least for this year) is 3.4% versus 6.8%.

Stafford Loan Borrowing Limits

The regular borrowing limits are considerably lower for students whose parents who do qualify for the PLUS.

• Freshman: $5,500
• Sophomore: $6,500
• Junior: $7,500
• Senior: $7,500

Stafford Loan Limits When PLUS Loan isn’t Available

Students whose parents don’t qualify for a PLUS can borrow significantly more.  Here are the yearly Stafford borrowing limits for these students:

• Freshman: $9,500
• Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors: $12,500

The family should be able to borrow what it needs through this program.

Bottom Line:

Families who have bad credit (at least in the eyes of the federal government) can take greater advantage of the Stafford, which is a better loan because of its lower interest rates and built-in consumer protections.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price.

How do you evaluate a college’s learning disability services?

In today’s blog post I’m sharing some questions that parents and students should ask when visiting a school (or contacting a disability office by phone.) Joy App, a college consultant in Houston, who was my source for yesterday’s post on learning disabilities, provided the questions that you’ll see below.

Like other college-bound students, those with learning differences or ADHD should make a point of visiting colleges before applying. However, in addition to visiting the admissions office, these students should also make a beeline to the Office of Disability Services to look for another type of match: support services with the appropriate accommodations for their needs.

Although all colleges are required by law to offer support services and accommodations, the level of support and types of accommodations available to students with learning differences varies widely from campus to campus, ranging from basic to comprehensive.

A visit to the Office of Disability Services is an opportunity to ask about the availability of support and accommodations that will help the student be successful in college by putting him or her on a level playing field with peers.

Questions to Ask a Disability Office

Here are important questions to ask:

1. How current must my testing be to to apply for accommodations?
2. How many students use your services?
3. What Assistive Technology (AT) services do you offer? Do you have an AT expert on staff?
4. What accommodations do you offer? What are the procedures and timelines to receive them?
5. How many Disabilities Support counselors do you have on your staff? Do they act as liasions?
6. If a professor is not in compliance regarding the student’s needed accommodations, how is the situation resolved?
7. What is the procedure to get extended time on exams? How much notice is required?  Do  students arrange extended time with professors or through the Disabilities Services Office?
8. Where do students take exams? Who proctors?
9. What do you consider the most difficult majors/classes for Disabilities Support students on this campus?
10. Will I have both an advisor in the Disabilities Services Office and a regular academic advisor? If both, how will the two advisors work with each other?
11. What is the four-year graduation rate for students with learning disabilities similar to mine?
12. Do you track students who have used your services after graduation? If so, what do your findings show about their success after graduation?

LD Red Flags

Two red flags to watch out for when evaluating campus disabilities services:

• The personality of the director or staff member is off-putting.  This is paramount since she/he represents the personality of the department.
• The college Disabilities Services Office website is not user friendly or is difficult to locate.

As with admissions meetings, students should prepare ahead of time for their meeting with the Disabilities Services Office. Practicing the questions they want to ask with a parent or other adult beforehand can be helpful, so that they avoid having to read questions from a script. It is perfectly fine for the student to take notes.

Ideally, the student should also meet with a successful current DS student while on campus. Rest assured this process gets easier with each campus visit.

Learn More:

If you missed yesterday’s post on this topic, here it is:

College Admissions and Learning Disabilities

Below you’ll find a guest blog that Bob Bessette, the father of a rising senior at Bowdoin College in Maine, wrote. This post first appeared on my college blog in December when Bessette’s daughter  was finishing up her semester abroad in Ireland.

I am rerunning this blog post primarily because my own son Ben, who is a rising junior at Beloit College, will be heading overseas in less than a month. Ben will be participating in a semester-abroad math program that is offered by St. Olaf College.

I also wrote a post about studying abroad when my daughter Caitlin was studying at the University of Barcelona for two semesters: Studying Abroad: 7 Things Parents Should Know

Here is the advice from Bob who writes his own blog at TotallyUniqueLife:

Studying Abroad in Ireland

University College Cork

Four long months have passed since our daughter left to study abroad at the University College Cork in Ireland.  When she returns in a week,  she will be presumably a lot wiser, not only in the subject matter she has been studying, but also in the ways of the world.

I guess that’s the essence of studying abroad – to expand your horizons and get to know another culture other than the one you have lived in for your whole life.  Based on a recent conversation with my daughter, it appears that the study abroad semester has been successful.  She said just the other day during a Skype session,

“I’m just starting to realize that I’ll be leaving soon. Ya know, I’m really going to miss this place but I’m really looking forward to coming home.”

Isn’t this what you really want to hear as a parent?  She has fostered friendships with others who were also studying abroad, as well as with Irish students.  During this time she has also been able to visit two additional countries, Scotland and Italy.

She created a life for herself at her dorm making dinner on a nightly basis with roommates from other countries that also enjoy the cooking process.  She has explored the region, gotten to know the natives at the local marketplace and pubs, and has garnered a true sense of what the Irish culture is all about.

Study Abroad Tips for Parents

As parents, this was the first time my daughter had ever gone on a plane by herself.  We have traveled to Greece, Spain, and domestically as a family over the years, but this was the first time we ever watched, with misty eyes, as she walked through security to head off on her own adventure without us. Actually, it was a lot tougher leaving her off at college for the first time.  But this was different since we couldn’t just jump into our car, drive two hours, and be with her should she need us.  After four months of dealing with our daughter studying abroad, here are five tips I’d like to share with parents whose children are about to embark on a similar experience.

1. Finalize Travel Plans

One rather unnerving experience occurred while we were checking my daughter’s bags at the airline terminal the day she was leaving for Ireland.  The attendant asked my daughter if she had her return ticket yet and she responded “Not yet”.  The attendant told her “Then I can’t let you travel today”.  Needless to say, we were taken aback.  He explained that there was a recent edict from the State Department disallowing foreign travel unless a return flight was already booked.

Luckily my daughter had already scoped out return flights so she had a good idea of what it would cost.  She asked him if she could buy a ticket online right there using her laptop. He said “Sure” but he just needed to see the details and proof of purchase.  Within minutes she had bought her ticket online, showed him the ticket number, and we were on our way to eat some lunch before she was off to the security line.  Look into whether or not your child will need a return ticket before taking off.  It may save you from some heart palpitations at the airport.

What is strange is that my daughter actually knew of others from the U.S who did not buy their return flight before they left and had no problems flying to Ireland.  Perhaps it was a temporary thing or something related specifically to the airline.

2. Skype is your Friend

If you have not heard of Skype yet, get to know it.  Skype is a software application that will allow you to have a video chat with your child over the internet at no cost.  All it requires is that you download the application onto your computer and your child does the same.  You will also need a webcam that will plug into a USB port on your computer.  My daughter’s laptop already had a built-in webcam.  We had to buy one for our computer at a very reasonable cost.

One amazing aspect of this study abroad experience is that we actually have had more contact with our daughter since she has been in Ireland than when she is two hours away at college.  With Skype we have gotten to see and talk to her regularly and have not missed her nearly as much as we thought we would have.  There is something about seeing her and talking to her, in lieu of using email or talking on the phone, that allays those pangs of separation anxiety.  If there is one tip I would give any parent whose child is heading abroad it’s download Skype.

Technical Note: When my daughter got to Ireland she could not use Skype in her room at the dorm due to what we thought was a firewall issue.  What was strange was that another roommate could use Skype to communicate with her family.  We discovered that the latest version of Skype, which was on my daughter’s computer, would not work with the in-dorm proxy server.  All she had to do was uninstall the latest version of Skype, install the older version and Skype was up and running.  Hopefully your child does not have a similar issue but, if he or she does, this could be a potential solution.

3. Consider Social Media

My wife and I do not do Facebook but, to be honest, it may make a lot of sense to create a Facebook page so that you can have access to any pictures or comments that your child posts to their Facebook page.  Fortunately, my daughter created a blog when she went to Ireland that allowed us to see her pictures and hear of her adventures in Europe.  The only problem is that she posted all of her pictures on Facebook but only a few on the blog.  We had to ask our youngest daughter or other family members to log into their Facebook page so that we can see the many pictures our eldest has posted.

If you use Twitter and your child does as well, this is another way of using Social Media to keep in touch with your child abroad.  My daughter doesn’t do Twitter but, believe it or not, I do so it wasn’t a viable mode of communication for us.  It could be another option if both you and your child are regular Tweeters.

4. Bring Enough of the Essentials

This may seem obvious but some of the basic items that your child uses every day may not be available in the country to which they are heading.  For example, my daughter could not find quality dental floss or Chapstick in Ireland.  These are two items that she uses every day.  So I ended up shipping her 2 packs of dental floss and a 3-pack of Chapstick in one of those padded envelopes.  Unfortunately, the package did not arrive for over a month and we had thought it had gotten lost in the mail.  In the meantime, she was able to get these items from someone else who was visiting from the States.  If your child uses something on a regular basis, make sure they bring enough of it to last them the amount of time that they will be abroad.

5. Try to Relax

We, as parents, go through a lot when it comes to our children.  If you are anything like my wife and I, you worry about anything and everything that could go wrong with your child.  It is especially difficult when they are in another country far away from your control.  If I were to give some advice to my fellow parents it would be to try to concentrate on the many benefits of the adventure on which your child is about to embark.  If you try to focus on how much your child will gain from this experience, it will be a lot easier for you to relax.

In one week we will be welcoming our child, with open arms, back from an adventure that only she has experienced.  It was tough on all of us but personal growth is achieved through trying times.  I somehow think that she will be a little bit older and little bit wiser from the experience.  I wish you and your child much success with your mutual study abroad experience!

Bob Bessette is a parent who has felt the pangs of separation anxiety associated with his daughter going away to college.  He writes about experiences like this, and others, on his own blog entitled TotallyUniqueLife, which deals with practical solutions, tips, and advice for your life.