The College Solutions Blog

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

Ivy League
April 3, 2012

Getting Stiffed by Harvard

I received an email from a mom over the weekend who was unhappy that her daughter, who beat the odds and got into an Ivy League school, didn’t receive a scholarship from the institution. Here is her note: Our annual household income is more than $750,000 –my daughter is admitted to Harvard – does that mean we have to pay...
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January 3, 2012

Another Dreadful College List

During the holidays, I wrote a post about a teenager, who has been applying to inappropriate universities. (At least in my opinion.) If you didn’t get a chance to read the post, here it is: Applying to the Wrong Universities I wanted to revisit this issue because I believe this is arguably the No. 1 college admission mistake that teenagers...
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December 19, 2011

Where Every Week Is Finals Week

Last week our son Ben called the house wanting to know if we wanted to Skype. We usually call him every Sunday to find out how he’s doing so whenever he contacts us it’s a big surprise. His primary reason for calling was to share with us how hard he was studying for his math final exam. He ended up...
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November 14, 2011

Qualifying for Financial Aid: How Wealthy is Too Wealthy?

Over the weekend my sister was telling me about a teenager, who is getting recruited by a couple of Ivy League schools to play softball. The parents are excited about the prospects of her daughter getting a sports scholarship to an Ivy League school. Does anybody out there know what’s wrong with this dream? The eight Ivy League schools don’t...
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October 31, 2011

The Myth of the Ivy League

Do you need to graduate from an Ivy League school or other ultra elite college to earn the highest salaries? Many families believe that graduates who can put Princeton or Yale on their resume will fare significantly better financially than smart students who end up earning their degrees from elsewhere. In a famous study, two economists tackled this question about...
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5
June 6, 2011

Cutting the Cost of College by 49%

When you are looking at colleges, don’t believe the sticker price. Why? Because college are priced like airline tickets. Everybody pays a different fare. When I give talks to families with teenagers, that’s one of the first points that I emphasize. It’s your job then to find colleges and universities that are not only great academic fits, but also financial...
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May 12, 2011

Ivy League: West Coast Tech Advantage

I once calculated that only .2% of freshmen who start college every year head off to the Ivy League, but these eight schools still monopolize much of the national coverage of college issues. The spotlight on the Ivy League has helped to make it nearly impossible to get into these eight schools, as well as a small group of other...
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March 13, 2011

Do You Really Need an Ivy League Education?

Do you need to graduate from an Ivy League school or other super elite college to earn the highest salaries? Many families believe that graduates who can put Harvard or Yale on their resume will fare significantly better financially than smart students who end up earning their degrees from elsewhere. In a famous study, two economists tackled this question nearly...
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0
March 8, 2011

Is Any College Really Worth $50,000 a Year?

Affluent families, who can afford to send their children anywhere to college, are becoming more discriminating. Some are questioning whether a private college that costs $50,000 or more is really worth the price. That’s one of the take-home messages of a podcast that I listened to recently on The Chronicle of Higher Education’s website. The newspaper interviewed John T. Lawlor,...
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December 18, 2010

A Race to Nowhere Skeptic

Race to Nowhere, a documentary about the stress that college-bound teenagers experience, has gotten a lot of attention. I first heard about Race to Nowhere a couple of weeks ago after I gave a college presentation to a group of financial advisers and their clients in Irvine, CA. An adviser, who raved about the film, wrote its title on his...
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