The College Solutions Blog

April 8, 2009

Do you Twitter? I don’t, but I’ve been getting pressure from people to start tweeting about college. I’m still on the fence on that one, but I have started reading up on Twittering. I ran across a fascinating story this week about Twittering in the higher-ed world. A Twitterer (Is that a word?) at The Chronicle of Higher Education asked...

March 27, 2009

During March Madness, I’ve been rooting for my alma mater – the University of Missouri. I’ll be thrilled if Missouri wins its first national championship, but that wouldn’t keep me from feeling sorry for the school’s basketball players. Only 25% of Mizzou’s basketball players ultimately graduate. And that pathetic number is hardly a fluke. The Higher Ed Watch Blog recently...

February 26, 2009

When you’re in the thick of the college admission process, it sometimes feels that every teenager in America is applying to the same schools as your child. The reality is actually starkly different. The vast majority of Americans never earn a college degree. The Lumina Foundation, which is one of the white knights in the higher ed world, hopes to...

February 24, 2009

Ludwig Maximilian University To cope with scary economic times are American colleges and universities going to deep six some of their amenities? This was the question that I explored in yesterday’s blog. It’s unlikely, however,  that American college students will ever experience the bare-bones, higher-ed experiences that’s prevalent Europe. With the notable exception of Great Britain, tuition is free in...

January 29, 2009

A few days ago, I wrote a blog about how college admission officers are increasingly turning to new media when marketing to teenagers. But teenagers are going to be more interested in how schools are using these new tools to snoop on them. An ambitious study conducted at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, suggests that admissions stalking isn’t pervasive. At...

January 10, 2009

It’s hard researching online colleges. U.S. News & World Report certainly doesn’t rank online schools and the publishing world largely ignores distant learning colleges. Visit a bookstore and it’s doubtful that you’ll find anything worthwhile. When I checked on Amazon.com, one of the only books that I found was more than eight years old. During a period when more people...

December 24, 2008

The College Prowler publishes a popular series of books and undoubtedly part of its success can be traced back to its marketing efforts. But the publisher recently got caught stepping over the line with a sneaky viral marketing campaign on Facebook. An enterprising blogger discovered that fake students were creating “Class of 2013” groups on Facebook to attract high school...

December 7, 2008

I always love to read articles that question the wisdom of Advanced Placement courses that ambitious teenagers feel compelled to take in high school. Consequently, I enjoyed this New York Times’ article  today that revisited the decision of a wealthy suburban high school to phase out AP classes. A year after Scarsdale (NY) High School decided to begin shutting down its AP...

November 19, 2008

The other day someone signed up on my blog to be notified whenever I post something new. This wouldn’t have been remarkable except the visitor was from Russia. Looking at one of my blog’s analytical tools I discovered that just about one out of every four visitors are from a foreign country. So in honor of visitors from Singapore, Mexico,...

October 4, 2008

I think everybody assumes that winning a college athletic scholarship is extremely difficult. And that’s certainly the case if you expect your kid to earn a full-ride scholarship from a Division I or Division II school. But there are other ways to shrink the cost of college even if your child isn’t a superstar athlete. My daughter Caitlin is a...