The College Solutions Blog

May 2, 2010

Colleges love applicants who are leaders. This collegiate desire to find leaders doesn’t jive with the fact that most teenagers — or Americans in any other age group — just aren’t leaders. But here’s the good news:  A teen doesn’t have to be the president or v.p. of his or her class to be considered a leader. In fact, teenagers...

April 23, 2010

Federal student loans are going to be a reality for most college students whether they will be freshmen in the fall or returning students. I’ve started getting questions about student loans from my college blog visitors so I’m going to start tackling them periodically. Here is the first student loan question in the queue: 1. Where do I apply for...

April 20, 2010

I banged out an email full of financial advice this week to a soon-to-be college graduate, who luckily has already lined up a job. She wanted to know if she should start saving for retirement as soon as she graduates. Here’s what I told her: Absolutely! I was thrilled that this young woman was already thinking about retirement. As a...

April 19, 2010

How do you shop for  graduate school programs? With the economy still floundering, more Americans are considering attending graduate school. But how do you find the best ones? Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas A. Benton, an English professor at Hope College made a stab at answering that question. He observed that the  universities receiving the highest graduate...

April 5, 2010

Will your family qualify for college financial aid? I bet you that most parents think they won’t qualify for financial aid although most will. Here’s a shocker: even families that make $150,000 or even $200,000 may qualify for close to $25,000 in financial aid at very expensive schools. In the college admission process, financial aid misconceptions can easily punish families....

March 31, 2010

What are the best and worst college majors for students who want to make the highest starting salaries? Engineering students dominate the best college majors by salary. Engineering majors represent eight out of 10 highest-paying bachelor’s degrees. The other two disciplines in the top 10 best college degrees are computer science and information sciences and systems. The best-paying college major...

March 29, 2010

College visit. Yes, it’s that time of year  when high school seniors and juniors are planning college visits during spring break. You can learn a lot during a college visit so you need to make the most of the opportunity. During a campus visit, here are 31 questions that you should ask: College Graduation Track Record What is your four-year...

March 26, 2010

Where are America’s green colleges? Every year GreenReportCard.org attempts to provide the answer with its College Sustainability Report Card. There are lots of ways to find green colleges. If you visit GreenReportCard, you’ll be able to filter for  green campuses in more than 100 ways. To make the search far less intimidating, you’ll find on the organization’s home page the...

March 22, 2010

Never underestimate the ability of college students to drink. Out here in San Diego this weekend, thousands of college students on spring break participated in something called Floatopia. Floatopia drew up to 6,000 college students, who showed up with their swimming suits and beer coolers ready to dodge San Diego’s prohibition on drinking on its beaches. The students cleverly skirted...

March 15, 2010

Ever hear about college taxes? No this isn’t a joke. If you aren’t careful you could owe college taxes on your 529 plan. Nobody tells you that you could ultimately owe taxes on a 529 college plan, but plenty of people discover this nightmare during tax season. Before I get to the bad news, let me review why parents gravitate...