The College Solutions Blog

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

Researching colleges
Featured image for “Researching whether a college will close”
October 12, 2020

Researching whether a college will close

For most colleges and universities, competing for high school seniors has been a cutthroat Hunger Games exercise for many years. Before the pandemic hit, the majority of colleges were failing to meet their freshmen admission goals every year. At the start of the pandemic, some respected higher-ed observers predicted that many colleges would close by the summer, but that hasn’t...
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Featured image for “What’s Critical in a College Admission Checklist”
November 27, 2017

What’s Critical in a College Admission Checklist

Using  a college admission checklist is critical when your child is applying to colleges and universities. Allowing  a teenager to apply to any colleges without a solid game plan can be a financial and academic disaster. In fact, ignoring advance planning is one reason why ONE OUT OF THREE students who start at four-year universities end up transferring somewhere else....
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Featured image for “Digging Deeper When Researching Colleges”
April 25, 2016

Digging Deeper When Researching Colleges

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 a campus tour won’t be...
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August 21, 2012

12 Ways to Find and Research Colleges

How do you locate good colleges and universities? I get that question a lot. Today I want to share some online resources to find and research schools. In no particular order, here are resources to check out: 1. Do-It-Yourself College Rankings. Do-It-Yourself College Rankings is the creation of Michelle Kretzschmar, the mother of a college student, who has a background...
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July 8, 2011

A Great Resource for Researching Colleges

Summer is a great time to research schools. So today I want to share a great online resource to help you evaluate colleges.  It’s called COLLEGEdata. COLLEGEdata can provide a ton of information on any college. I think it’s more indepth than what you can find by heading to the College Board and accessing a college’s profile through its College...
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June 16, 2011

When Should You Start Visiting Colleges?

When should families start visiting colleges? A parent recently asked me that question and I’m going to respond by sharing the advice of Kris Hintz, a very smart college consultant in New Jersey, who addresses this issue in her upcoming book – the title is still not firmed up or I would share it. Kris believes that until a teenager...
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April 16, 2011

Jump Start Your Search for the Right Colleges

Where do you begin a college search? 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...
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October 12, 2010

How Much Time Will You Spend Researching Colleges?

Zillow, the website that can estimate how much your house is worth, released a survey earlier this year that suggested that Americans only spend five hours researching mortgages. Americans devote about the same amount of time planning vacations. It’s significantly less time than the 10 hours that consumers devote to buying a car. That made me wonder how many hours...
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May 18, 2010

How Many Hours Does It Take to Research Colleges?

Zillow, where you can find out how much your house is worth, has released a survey that suggests that Americans only spend five hours researching mortgages. That’s the same amount of time that Americans spend planning vacations. It’s significantly less time than the 10 hours that consumers devote to buying a car, which is obviously a much smaller purchase. That...
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September 29, 2009

Attending College Close to Home

When it comes to checking out colleges, I’m a big believer in casting a wide net. Look at big, small, public and private institutions. And check out schools that aren’t in your time zone. Most families don’t do this. The vast majority of students never look beyond the public universities in their own state and most don’t wander more than...
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