The College Solutions Blog

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

College rankings
September 14, 2010

College Rankings: My Pet Peeve

As many of you know, I’m not a fan of college rankings. I think most rankings are lame and their methodology is creaky. When a mom emailed me yesterday complaining about the rankings, I decided to use this as an opportunity to share one of my biggest pet peeves about the college rankings of U.S. News & World Report, which...
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August 29, 2010

Best College Rankings: No. 50 – 100

If you hadn’t already noticed, this is college rankings month. US News & World Report, the big college rankings  gorilla, released its latest lists of the best liberal arts colleges and best universities earlier in August.  Forbes Magazine rolled out its best college list this month too and the Washington Monthly unveiled its picks for  best colleges a few days...
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August 22, 2010

Attending a School With a Lousy College Ranking

Some of you already know that I write a weekly college blog post for US News & World Report. While the magazine’s website contains a treasure trove of valuable information about college, I hate it’s college rankings. This put me in an uncomfortable position when the 2011 college rankings were released with tremendous fanfare last week. To coincide with the...
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June 29, 2010

Choosing Colleges: 5 Things You Must Do

Need help in choosing colleges?  It so, you’ll be interested in this college blog post by David Montesano. David is an admission strategist with College Match,  an educational consulting firm that aims to help families find great colleges at discount prices. Here are 5 things that David suggests that you keep in mind when when are looking for college matches:...
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June 15, 2010

How I Ended Up Writing Three College Blogs!

How many college blogs is too many? I am sheepishly asking this question because I’ve just started writing for my third college blog. You can find my newest college blog at US News & World Report. My first post,  The 10 Best College Websites, went live on the site this afternoon. I launched my first college blog, The College Solution,...
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June 1, 2010

Shrinking the Cost of College: Twitter Chat Tonight

If you’d like to learn more about shrinking the cost of college, I’ll be sharing advice on the first edition of #CollegeChat at 6 p.m. PST tonight on Twitter. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to find this one-hour college Twitter chat. You can find the instructions at the bottom of this post. During the live Twitter chat, I...
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April 5, 2010

Finding Great Colleges: A Handy Cheat Sheet

I am in Paris this week — at the tail end of a family vacation visiting my daughter, who is studying this year at the University of Barcelona. I’d rather be out exploring Paris and eating chocolate so I’m rerunning one of my favorite posts that explains how students can find wonderful colleges that might not normally be on their...
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January 11, 2010

Top 10 College Websites for Finding Great Schools

Want to research colleges, but not sure where to start? It’s no surprise. When I just typed “college” into Google, I got 634 million college websites. To make your job easier, I’m sharing wonderful websites that can help you assemble a great list of colleges. If you want to research specific colleges, here are my Top 10  College Websites: College...
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January 3, 2010

Favorite College Blog Posts of 2009

Every weekend I share the college blog posts that I wrote during the past week for CBSMoneyWatch. Since it was the last week of 2009, I used the posts as a way to highlight what I’ve written since CBSMoneyWatch launched during past summer. Favorite Blog Posts for 2009 In this post, you’ll find some of my favorite college blog posts....
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October 5, 2009

College Rankings Guest Post

A guest commentary that I wrote for the Center for College Affordability and Productivity on college rankings got posted today. In my post, I shared why I think the college ranking system developed by the center for Forbes Magazine is superior to the more popular and older college rankings that US News & World Report generates. Last week on my...
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