The College Solutions Blog

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

Boston College
Featured image for “Schools That Meet 100% of Financial Need”
July 16, 2015

Schools That Meet 100% of Financial Need

While there are nearly 2,800 four-year colleges and universities in the United States, there are less than six dozen that claim that they meet 100% of the demonstrated financial need of all or most of their freshmen. The list below includes the names of those schools. I’ve also included institutions on this list that say that they meet at least...
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Featured image for “Should This Teen Attend the University of Pittsburgh? Part II”
July 3, 2013

Should This Teen Attend the University of Pittsburgh? Part II

I want to thank everyone for such thoughtful and helpful responses to the dad who is stressing out about encouraging his daughter to walk away from an expensive acceptance from Boston College and instead trot off this fall to the honors college at the University of Pittsburgh. I think it’s safe to say that there was an overriding consensus that...
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Featured image for “Having Second Thoughts About the University of Pittsburgh”
July 1, 2013

Having Second Thoughts About the University of Pittsburgh

I received this email over the weekend from an anxious father that I wanted to share with you. The dad is having second thoughts about the school that he pressured his daughter to attend. He is already contemplating his daughter transferring next year to a different school. I think his story could generate some interesting discussions about rankings, price, graduate...
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June 25, 2012

Will Your Home Equity Hurt Financial Aid Chances? A Case Study

Is your home equity going to hurt your chances of receiving need-based financial aid? The majority of families don’t need to worry about this because most schools don’t consider home equity. These  institutions use the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The FAFSA doesn’t even ask if the family owns a home. Some of these schools, however, will use an...
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November 5, 2009

College Applications: Should You Apply Early Action?

A friend of mine called me last week to ask whether her daughter should apply early action to Boston College. For a lot of high school seniors, applying to a college early action is a great idea. But early action isn’t for everyone including my friend’s daughter Julia. I’ll explain why momentarily. First of all, I want to emphasize that...
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