The College Solutions Blog

May 24, 2011

I’m going to be attending the annual conference of the Western Association for College Admission Counseling beginning Tuesday afternoon on the campus of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.  WACAC is a membership organization for high school counselors, college counselors and college admission officers, who work in Nevada and California. Get My College Workbook for Free! Because I expect to...

May 22, 2011

While it might not look like it, the college admission landscape is constantly changing. This month The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a fascinating article about admission trends at colleges across the country. I’m going to share the article with you and also highlight the trends that the Chronicle reporter uncovered: State universities continue to struggle. State budget cuts are...

May 19, 2011

I got an email the other day from a mom, whose son is brilliant. I assume he’s brilliant because he will be attending the California Institute of Technology in the fall as a freshman. The acceptance rate at Cal Tech is 13% and many of its student get near perfect SAT scores. This teenage boy applied to 21 schools (way...

May 18, 2011

What is the best way to ace your final exams? This is a timely question as millions of high school and college students are preparing to take their final exams. You might assume that reading textbooks and notes over and over again is the best way to study, but researchers from Purdue and Washington University insist that it’s not the...

May 17, 2011

Yesterday I shared the news that my daughter Caitlin graduated from college this week. And she did it in four years, which is a rare feat for today’s college students. If you missed the post here it is: Caitlin Graduates from Juniata College Today, I wanted to share what I wrote for my college blog over CBS MoneyWatch that mentions...

May 15, 2011

My daughter Caitlin graduated from Juniata College this weekend! It just seemed like yesterday that we had arrived at this beautiful campus for freshmen orientation and now Caitlin was walking across the stage to receive her bachelor’s degree. With rain clouds threatening, workers packed up the white folding chairs set out for the outdoor ceremony and everyone was directed into...

May 12, 2011

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...

May 11, 2011

Today I want to share a cautionary tale of a student who lost her full-ride scholarship. Her dad wrote and asked me for advice because the family can’t handle the out-of-state tuition at Louisiana State University. Frankly, this should never have been an issue for his daughter because she won a full-ride scholarship to Southeastern Louisiana University. I’ll let the...

May 10, 2011

What Is a small college? In recent posts, I’ve been looking at the size of colleges and explaining why size matters. It drives me nuts that students routinely pick schools by size without understanding the educational ramifications of their choices. Here are my three previous posts on this subject: What’s a Medium-Sized University? What is a Research University? Do You...

May 9, 2011

What does it mean when a teenager says, “I want to go to a medium-sized university?” In the last couple of posts I’ve been discussing the issue of college size. Kids often base a great deal of their decision about college on its size and I’ve been suggesting reasons why that can be a problem. Here are my past two...