How can you find schools that offer the college degree that you want?

That was the question that I got from a mother whose daughter hopes to become a registered nurse. The mom asked me  how her daughter could find a list of colleges and universities that offer nursing degrees. (Nursing, by the way, is the most popular major in the United States after business and accounting.)

This is a common question and the answer is relevant to anybody who wants to cast a wider net when looking for colleges. Luckily, it isn’t hard at all to develop a list of schools by college major. The resource that I referred her to was the federal College Navigator, which is a massive depository of information on thousands of colleges and universities.

To find a list of schools in a particular major you want to head to the College Navigator’s home page. Here’s what you’ll see:

When you’re on the site, look on the left hand side and click on the rectangle that says Browse for Programs.

In this case, I typed in nursing, which produced lots of different nursing majors. You must click the +add button to include the majors in your search.

To narrow your search you can designate that you want public or private schools and two-year or four-year schools. In my search, I selected private non-profit and public universities. You can also narrow your search by focusing on certain states. To choose by states, click on the Use Map icon. In this example, I selected 8 states in the Midwest. Yellow pins on the map designate the states that I picked.

Based on my criteria, I ultimately obtained a list of 160 Midwestern schools that have nursing programs. By clicking on each school’s hyperlink, you will find lots of information about the institution. Here is the beginning of the list of Midwestern nursing schools:

Bottom Line: You can find college and universities that offer any college majors that you are interested in by using the federal College Navigator. So check it out!

Does anybody else have suggestions on how to research majors? If so, please use the comment box below. I’d love to hear from you!

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes college blogs for CBSMoneyWatch and US News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter.

Read More on The College Solution:

5 Tips on Choosing a College Major

Why Not Major in Philosophy?

College Majors: What the Scottish Can Tell Us

Stressing About College Majors

I got an email yesterday from a mom whose teenage daughter wants to become a registered nurse. The mother wanted to know how her daughter could find a list of colleges and universities that offer nursing degrees.

This is a great question and the answer is relevant to anybody who wants to cast a wider net when looking for colleges. Luckily, it isn’t hard at all to develop a list of schools by college major. The resource that I instantly thought of was the federal College Navigator, which is a massive depository of information on thousands of colleges and universities.

To find a list of schools in a particular major you want to head to the College Navigator’s home page. Here’s what you’ll see:

When you’re on the site, look on the left hand side and click on the rectangle that says Browse for Programs.

In this case, I typed in nursing, which produced lots of different nursing majors. You must click the +add button to include the majors in your search.

To narrow your search you can designate that you want public or private schools and two-year or four-year schools. In my search, I selected private non-profit and public universities. You can also narrow your search by focusing on certain states. To choose by states, click on the Use Map icon. In this example, I selected 8 states in the Midwest. Yellow pins on the map designate the states that I picked.

Based on my criteria, I ultimately obtained a list of 160 Midwestern schools that have nursing programs. By clicking on each school’s hyperlink, you will find lots of information about the institution. Here is the beginning of the list of Midwestern nursing schools:

Bottom Line: You can find college and universities that offer any college majors that you are interested in by using the federal College Navigator. So check it out!

Does anybody else have suggestions on how to research majors? If so, please use the comment box below. I’d love to hear from you!

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes college blogs for CBSMoneyWatch and US News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter.

Read More on The College Solution:

5 Tips on Choosing a College Major

Why Not Major in Philosophy?

College Majors: What the Scottish Can Tell Us

Stressing About College Majors

The College Navigator is not flashy, but it contains incredible tools that tap into the US Department of Education’s vast college database.

The College Navigator provides information on individual schools in the following 12 categories:

1. General information
2. Tuition, fees and estimated student expenses
3. Financial aid
4. Net price
5. Enrollment
6. Admissions
7. Retention and graduation rate
8. Programs/majors
9. Varsity athletic teams
10. Accreditation
11. Campus security
12. Cohort default rates

Today I’m focusing on just one category — the net price. When considering whether a school will be affordable, I like to look at its net price statistics. This is where you can find out what families of various incomes typically pay for one year of college at a particular school.

The net price feature takes into account the typical grants and other assistance that students at a particular school obtain. The net price is far more important a figure than the sticker price, which is usually meaningless.

To illustrate how the net price feature works on College Navigator, I’m using Penn State, which is one of the nation’s largest flagship universities, and Gettysburg College, a private liberal arts college that’s also in Pennsylvania.

Penn State Average Net Price

Family Income                                                               Average Net Price

• $0 – $30,000                                                             $14,460
• $30,001 – $48,000                                                   $16,971
• $48,001 – $75,000                                                   $21,409
• $75,001 – $110,000                                                  $24,827
• $110,001 and higher                                                $25,849

Gettysburg College Average Net Price:

Family Income                                                              Average Net Price

• $0 – $30,000                                                             $9,395
• $30,001 – $48,000                                                   $10,137
• $48,001 – $75,000                                                   $17,053
• $75,001 – $110,000                                                  $22,566
• $110,001 and higher                                                $29,877

Looking at the net price of schools via the College Navigator is a great way to dispel misconceptions about the costs of individual institutions.  For accepted low-income applicants, for instance, Gettysburg is cheaper. Gettysburg is one of the rare schools that can meet 100% of each of its student’s demonstrated financial need. Public institutions like Penn State just don’t have the financial resources to be as generous to low-income students.

(Hot off the press, here is the list of all the schools that say they meet 100% of students’ demonstrated financial need: Which Colleges Claim to Meet Students’ Full Financial Need?)

On the other hand, Penn State will be a slightly less expensive alternative for wealthy students. Of course, price is hardly the only factor when choosing schools, but it’s good to obtain an idea in advance of looming costs.

Net Price Calculator

Later this year every college and university will have to install a net price calculator on their web sites that will be designed to provide individual families with a good idea of how much institutions on their lists will cost them. I think these net price calculators will be revolutionary and should make college costs transparent. Here is a story that I wrote about net price calculator last year:

New College Cost Calculators What You Need to Know

You’ll find plenty of more great statistics on the College Navigator and I’d urge you to explore the site.

Read more:

Using the College Board to Research Schools

6 Ways to Pick College Classes

Combining Liberal Arts With a Business College Degree

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of a workBook, Shrinking the Cost of College: 152 Ways to Cut the Cost of a Bachelor’s Degree. She also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter.

I recently wrote about how my son and the other two boys in his high school carpool shrank their college costs dramatically. The tuition for the three boys for the coming year totaled a whopping $136,500, but they received grants from their respective liberal arts colleges for the 2010-11 school year that totaled roughly $98,000.

When my two children were visiting schools, one of their main goals—beyond finding great colleges—was locating schools where we wouldn’t have to pay anywhere near full price. Checking the generosity of a school is a great way to cut college costs.

Today, I’m sharing eight ways to shrink college costs, but I’m first going to direct you to a story in The Wall Street Journal today that contains more. I happened to be quoted in the WSJ story: How to Tame College Costs – It’s Not Just Tuition.

8 College Cost Tips

1. Don’t just look in your backyard. About one out of every three college students attends a school that’s no more than 50 miles away. And most of these schools are public institutions.

For some students, however, distant private colleges will cost less than public universities after financial aid and scholarships. The boys in the carpool will be attending Beloit College in Beloit, WI. and  Carleton College in Northfield, MN, which is a quite a hike from San Diego.

2. Pay attention to graduation rates. Most families mistakenly assume that their children will graduate in four years. Fewer than 60 percent of college students graduate in six years! Always examine a school’s graduation rates and find out what it takes to get out in eight semesters.  College Results Online can help you pinpoint grad rates.

3. Look for the schools with generous financial aid packages. A good place to evaluate the generosity of a school is to look at its financial aid statistics on the federal College Navigator site.

4. Obtain a preliminary EFC. Before you begin looking at schools, check what your family’s Expected Family Contribution will be. This will be the amount of money, at a minimum, that you will need to cough up for one year of college. In many cases, you will have to kick in more than that figure. You can find online EFC calculators at FinAid.org and the College Board.

5. Apply for aid regardless of your income. Families that make $150,000 to $200,000 a year can sometimes qualify for significant need-based aid at pricey colleges. If you don’t file the FAFSA—and the CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE for some private schools—you won’t qualify for need-based help. Without completing the FAFSA, you also won’t have access to federal college loans.

6. Look for merit scholarships. At private schools, 82 percent of students receive merit aid. About two-thirds of students at public and private institutions combined receive some type of grant. An excellent resource for scholarships that colleges offer—the biggest source of college grants—is MeritAid.com.

7. Beware of reach schools. The danger of reach schools is that they often give little or no financial aid or scholarships to students who barely get in. Most schools reserve their best financial aid packages to the students they really covet.

8. Get good grades. The most important factor that colleges value more than any other is usually grades. An applicant’s GPA routinely matters more than SAT or ACT tests. So one of the very best ways to cut college costs is to simply earn a high grade point average in high school.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller, and she also write college blogs for CBSMoneyWatch and US News. Follow her on Twitter.

I tried to answer that question earlier this week when I wrote my first college blog post for US News & World Report. In the post, I nominated my own favorite college websites which can be invaluable for finding colleges, researching schools, pinpointing the generosity of individual colleges and learning about borrowing for college responsibly.

In no particular order, here are my top college website picks:

1. College Navigator
2. College Results Online
3. Cappex
4. Zinch
5. College Majors 101
6. College Insight
7. College Board
8. Project on Student Debt
9. Unigo
10. The Choice (The New York Times)

You can find out more about these 10 websites by reading my entire post entitled, The 10 Best College Websites.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and a new eBook, Shrinking the Cost of College. She also blogs for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter.

When you research colleges, you’re going to want to find schools that will provide your teenagers with an excellent education and get them out the door in four years. But how do you even start such a daunting college search?

Scattered around my blog, I’ve written plenty about how to conduct a college search.  I thought it would be helpful to compile the links to posts that can help you research colleges in one place.

Here goes:

Top 10 College Websites for Finding Great Schools

Read this post to find 10 websites that can help you make your college search easier as you assemble a great list of colleges.

Finding a Great College in Your Region

Most students — or at least their parents — don’t want to attend school too far from home. Read this post to find the right colleges, which are often overlooked ones, in your region.

Hunting for Great Colleges

In this post I explain how you can use the federal College Navigator to find schools that offer particular majors at public and/or private schools in any part of the country.

The Latest Trend: Online College Matchmaking

You’ll learn more about Cappex and Zinch, which I urge teenagers to check out when starting their college search.

New College Website: Research Colleges Like a Pro

This posts explains how you can get detailed information on thousands of colleges at CollegeInsight, which was launched by The Institute for College Access and Success.

College Visit: 31 Questions You Need to Ask

You can learn a tremendous amount during a college visit but you need to make the most of the opportunity by asking the right questions.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter.