The College Solutions Blog

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

Money
Featured image for “How Home Equity Impacts Financial Aid”
January 13, 2018

How Home Equity Impacts Financial Aid

Have you given any thought to how home equity might hurt your child’s chances for financial aid? Luckily, at most state and private colleges and universities, the equity in your primary home is a non-issue. That’s because most schools only require families to complete the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) when applying for financial aid, which doesn’t even...
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Featured image for “Searching for Colleges by Price Tag”
January 4, 2018

Searching for Colleges by Price Tag

College price tags are meaningless. Most students do not pay full tuition price for college. That said, paying attention to college prices can be extremely helpful in making college more affordable. Here’s a simple example: Getting a $20,000-a-year merit scholarship from a school that has a published price of $45,000 will obviously make a college much more affordable than receiving...
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Featured image for “10 Things You Need to Know About College Net Price Calculators”
September 18, 2017

10 Things You Need to Know About College Net Price Calculators

Here is what typically happens during college admission season: Students apply to whatever colleges they want without having any clue about whether these schools will give them grants and/or scholarships. Parents are often nervously okay with their children disregarding price when finalizing their lists. The attitude of these moms and dads can be summed up this way:  Go ahead and...
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Featured image for “1300 people listened to this webinar. You should too!”
July 9, 2017

1300 people listened to this webinar. You should too!

Over the past few days I had 1,300 people listen live to my webinar that revealed eight insider secrets that colleges aren’t eager to share, but that you need to know to find good college matches and shrink your college costs. When you start looking for colleges, you need to be on guard just as you would walking onto a...
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Featured image for “Here is the Best College Loan”
June 30, 2017

Here is the Best College Loan

As recently as the early 1990s, most students did not take out college loans. Today roughly two out of every three students borrow to pay for college due to the runaway cost of college. The typical student borrower is now leaving school with debt of roughly $37,000. Just the outstanding federal college loan debt now exceeds credit-card debt. Keep this...
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Featured image for “How To Tell if a College Will Go Bust”
June 15, 2017

How To Tell if a College Will Go Bust

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 though it’s rarely going to...
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Featured image for “When College Sticker Prices Can Matter”
May 16, 2017

When College Sticker Prices Can Matter

College sticker prices are often meaningless because most students at state and private universities don’t pay it. Published prices, however, can be a helpful starting point when exploring what kind of price break, in the form of scholarship and grants, your child might get at a particular institution. Here’s an example: Your teenager receives a $15,000 annual merit award at...
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Featured image for “Success Story! Saying No to a Dream College”
May 8, 2017

Success Story! Saying No to a Dream College

Last month I heard from many parents agonizing about whether to let their teenagers attend their dream colleges. These dream colleges were inevitably highly selective to elite universities which cost $65,000 to $70,000 a year! I don’t believe any college or universities is worth paying that kind of money! My most recent blog post, which originally ran in 2014, focused...
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Featured image for “How to Decipher a Financial Aid Letter”
April 11, 2017

How to Decipher a Financial Aid Letter

Financial aid awards are often confusing. I believe many colleges and universities intentionally make financial aid awards hard to decipher to trick families into thinking that their institutions are being generous even when they aren’t. Obfuscation is an effective way to keep parents off balance. Since we are heading into the season when students will be receiving their financial aid...
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Featured image for “Should You Pay More Than $66,000 for Northeastern University?”
March 28, 2017

Should You Pay More Than $66,000 for Northeastern University?

This is the time of year when parents and teenagers stress about their college choices. Parents whose children have expensive collegiate tastes can struggle with the some variation of the following question: Should they spend obscene amounts of money so their children can attend their dream school or should they insist that their children stick with more reasonably priced alternatives?...
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