I am a huge supporter of families throwing a wider net when looking for colleges. I’m not going to lie, however, I do get push back from skeptical parents. Here is one of the questions that I hear from these folks: What if a promising college is on the verge of going belly up? Even […]
Will your child end up going to his or her dream school? The odds are that your child won’t if the college or university is a rankings alpha dog. And that’s especially true if you don’t enjoy a powerful hook such as being a celebrity or a one-percenter kid, a legacy or an athlete. The […]
If you like periodically checking out my college blog, I want to alert you to another place where I share my thoughts about college issues. I recently began a college column at Cappex, which is the popular resource for students and parents researching colleges and looking for scholarships. Here is the link to the archive […]
Most students who hope to earn a bachelor’s degree will enroll at a university. The schools that students dream of attending are almost always research universities. It’s far less common for teenagers to end up at a college. I find that reality unfortunate because a college can often provide a better education for undergraduates than […]
I wrote this post last year, but wanted to share it again because the messages are equally relevant today! Lynn O’Shaughnessy Plenty of parents, who enroll in my online course – The College Cost Lab – are affluent and highly educated. Quite a few of these moms and dads would like to see their children […]
How do you know if the colleges or universities that your child is looking at would provide him or her with an excellent education? You won’t. College pricing is inching closer to transparency thanks to net price calculators and other tools, but it’s difficult to form an educated opinion about the strength of a school’s […]
When building a college list, it’s critical to check graduation rates. Paying for college is hard enough without adding a fifth or six year to the tab! And yet most college students do not graduate in four years. Many, many parents whom I’ve talked to over the years seem shocked by this reality. In fact, […]
When researching colleges, many families gravitate to what they call “great schools” without having any idea of whether these institutions merit their reputations. In reality, no college or university is a monolithic entity that is uniformly excellent, average or mediocre. That’s why just picking schools by relying on general impressions, U.S. News’ actual rankings or […]
