Great College Advice

According to an article in today’s New York Times, Harvard announced that its endowment has lost 22%, and may lose up to 30% by the end of its fical year in June.  Harvard depends on its endowment income for 35% of its operating budget.  So it is undeniable that the financial squeeze will affect every [...]

Actress Emma Watson is embarking on a new adventure:  the college search.  Apparently she is considering a liberal arts degree from one of the Ivies.  She was spotted this week visiting Yale University, Harvard University, and Brown University.

While it was difficult for her to maintain a low profile amid the throngs of Harry Potter fans [...]

The Los Angeles Times ran an opinion piece today written by Anthony W. Marx, the president of Amherst College, in which he eloquently defended independent decision-making by independent colleges.  In the past year or so, Congress has had its knickers in a twist about the rising value of college endowments at some private colleges–even as [...]

Two more colleges have readjusted their financial aid policies in the wake of Harvard’s decision to woo the middle classes by offering richer aid packages (which I wrote about here). The changes were reported in Inside Higher Ed:
Two more colleges have joined the growing number pledging to eliminate loans for low-income students. Claremont McKenna [...]

Columbia University announced today that it was joining its Ivy League sister institutions in revamping its financial aid policies to make the University more affordable for the middle class. Families with incomes of less than $60,000 will pay nothing. Families with incomes of less than $100,000 will see a significant increase in the [...]

Today I spent another fun-filled day at the Colorado Crossroads volleyball tournament in Denver, where nearly 10,000 volleyball players are participating in this national qualifier event.
Parents were steadily coming up to my booth at the tournament (where I was, of course, dispensing some great college advice) to talk about their concerns. The topic of [...]

Bowdoin College announced that it has joined the ranks of colleges that have eliminated loans from their financial aid packages. These loans are being replaced by outright grants (or need-based scholarships) to its current and incoming students. It is the first college with an endowment of under $1 billion.
Others that have made similar [...]

The New York Times reported in an article yesterday that the numbers of applications to Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, and many other colleges are way up this year. Part of this increase is due to demographics, part of it is due to the ease of electronic submissions, and part of it is due to [...]

An article in today’s New York Times reports that Yale University has followed the lead of Harvard in pumping $24 million into its financial aid budget. This will help reduce the squeeze on middle income families with incomes of less than $200,000. Financial aid packages for a large portion of current and future [...]

As I explained in a previous post, I recently asked a variety of friends and acquaintances how they selected the college they attended.
This respondent attended Harvard as an undergraduate in the mid-1980s. He is now a lawyer living in Michigan. His story is interesting because it demonstrates that serendipity can have an important [...]