The College Solutions Blog

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

US News
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September 22, 2014

Please Apply So We Can Reject You!

High-achieving students who apply every year to the Ivies and other elites schools have heard the grim statistics about how ridiculously hard it is to get into these schools. That reality, however, doesn’t deter students from applying even though it’s pointless for most of them. Ambitious teenagers aiming to attend the nearly impregnable schools at the top of the rankings...
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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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5
February 14, 2012

Finding Hidden Gems for Your College List

Yesterday I described how you can use College Results Online to help you generate a promising list of college. If you missed it, here it is: Getting Ideas For a College List Here’s another idea:  Head to The Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which is the think tank that generates Forbes magazine’s annual college rankings. On the center’s site...
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February 10, 2012

What the Super Bowl Can Tell Us About College Rankings

Today I’m sharing with you a great post from Michelle Kretzschmar, who writes a college blog that focuses on using data to create your own college rankings:  DIYCollegeRankings. I hope you read it and also visit her blog. Football and US News Rankings Like more than 100 million other Americans, I watched the Super Bowl. I always like the part...
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February 3, 2012

How College Rankings Can Hurt You

Yesterday, in writing about the latest college rankings scandal on my college blog, I mentioned that the institutional pursuit of college rankings glory, has hurt millions of students in ways they can’t even imagine. Today I want to elaborate on that observation. If you missed yesterday’s post, here it is: Colleges and Universities That Cheat Millions of students are adversely...
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September 24, 2011

The Man Behind the College Rankings

I’ve been in New Orleans this week attending the annual conference of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. At the conference I’ve been doing short interviews with college experts whom I think you’ll enjoy hearing from. I’m going to start out today with an interview that I conducted with Robert Morse, who is the man behind US News &...
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September 13, 2011

College Rankings: A Weird Beauty Contest

As many of you know, I’m not a fan of US News and World Report’s college rankings even though I write a college blog for the magazine.  The methodology is flawed and the rankings sponsor does not try to measure what kind of education students receive at their schools. What I find even more troubling is the fact that  college...
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May 31, 2011

Global College Rankings: A Really Bad Idea

As many of you know, I’m not a fan of US News & World Report’s college rankings. I write a college blog for US News, but that has never stopped me from arguing that the magazine’s rankings has prompted many colleges and universities to act badly and sometimes even behave unethically in pursuit of higher college rankings. This institutional behavior...
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April 24, 2011

No. 1 Reason Why College Rankings Are Lame

As many of you know, I’m not a fan of US News and World Report’s college rankings. I think the methodology is dreadful and the college rankings have encouraged colleges to behave very badly. After a mom emailed me to complain about the rankings, I decided to use this as an opportunity to share one of my biggest pet peeves...
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December 2, 2010

50 Colleges With the Best and Worst Professors

Can anybody pinpoint which colleges have the best college professors and the worst professors? I doubt it, but that doesn’t mean people won’t try. Yesterday I wrote a college blog post for CBSMoneyWatch that made a stab at establishing which colleges and universities have the best and worst professors. Here are the controversial posts: 25 Colleges With the Best Professors...
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