The College Solutions Blog

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

Admissions
Featured image for “The Latest on College Prices and Selectivity”
January 16, 2013

The Latest on College Prices and Selectivity

Do you assume that most teenagers face lousy odds of getting accepted into a good college? Lots of families believe that the admission process is stacked heavily against applicants, but this isn’t true. I largely blame the media’s obsessive coverage of the most elite universities for that misconception. A report from the College Board, Trends in College Pricing 2012, clearly...
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Featured image for “Deferred? 8 Things You Can Do”
January 2, 2013

Deferred? 8 Things You Can Do

What happens if your child recently received a college admission deferral in the mail? Plenty of students, who applied to schools via early action and early decision applications, received their deferral notices around the holidays.  The news clearly wasn’t the kind of gift these teenagers were expecting, but students need to understand that a deferral doesn’t mean that their hopes...
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May 7, 2012

Answering Your College Questions

Last week people posted questions on The College Solution’s Facebook page that I promised to answer after visiting a regional college conference in Reno. I started chipping away at the questions last week with these two posts: Answering Your SAT and ACT Questions The Realities of Merit Scholarship Facebook Questions Today I am answering questions about admission requirements, SAT/ACT practices...
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December 21, 2011

The Hazards of Being a Stealth Applicant

If you plan to apply to college as a stealth applicant listen up. Stealth applicants are teenagers who never contact a college before sending in their application. Stealth college applications used to be rare.  Most teenagers contacted colleges through traditional means such as requesting materials, talking to admission counselors at college fairs and visiting schools. Today, however, teenagers can learn...
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September 28, 2011

College Admissions: The Rich Kid Advantage

College Admissions: The Rich Kid Advantage A new ambitious survey of hundreds of senior college admission officials from across the country has revealed just what kind of high school students are in big demand:  R-I-C-H kids. It’s no surprise that admission officers at both public and private colleges and universities are salivating over wealthy teenagers. Their parents have the money...
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September 6, 2011

The Odds of Applying Early Decision

Should you apply early decision to your favorite college or university? I know fall has arrived because I’ve started receiving questions about early decision. I’ll be addressing early decision and early action issues in the coming weeks, but I wanted to answer a question that I received today from a mother, who heard me give a talk recently in Southern...
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August 17, 2011

How To Reach Out to a College

How do you contact a college? I decided to write about this today because I’m helping a great young man named Tyrone in St. Louis navigate his college choices. He will be the first person in his family to attend college so I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t know how to reach out to colleges.  I’ve talked to many students...
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July 19, 2011

Reading a College Admission Office’s Mind

In my last post I talked about the benefits of visiting colleges before applying — particularly at schools where you can collect brownie points for showing up. If you missed it, here it is: Which Colleges Should I Visit? Today I’m directing you to a couple of resources that can help you pinpoint whether a school really cares if you...
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April 1, 2011

Getting Rejected by Harvard

The Ivy League schools sent out their acceptance letters this week and most students who had dreamed of going to these universities and other highly selective schools are disappointed. I’m going to share the experience of one highly accomplished girl during this admission season to illustrate why you need to cast a wide net when applying to colleges. The girl,...
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March 24, 2011

Can Facebook Hurt My Admission Chances?

Can Facebook hurt a teenager’s chances of getting accepted to colleges? Specifically can the stuff that students post on Facebook impact their chances? Unigo, the popular college research website, recently posed that question to admission experts from around the country. Unigo offered to share some of the responses with my college blog visitors.  You can find the rest of the...
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