Valuable insights from Lynn O’Shaughnessy
a nationally recognized college expert.
George Washington University
May 8, 2018
15 Things to Know About U.S. News’ College Rankings
While U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings are wildly popular, few families know much about how they are created. Before you place too much faith in U.S. News’ college rankings, here are 15 things that you should know about them. 1. U.S. News relies on rankings to stay alive. U.S. News’ college rankings wields tremendous power even though the...
March 24, 2014
Don’t Be Tricked By Misleading Financial Aid Letters
FInancial aid letters 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 this is the time of year when students are receiving their financial aid letters,...
October 23, 2013
A Need-Blind Admission Controversy
For years, George Washington University has told families that it observed a need-blind admission policy. Students were accepted regardless of their ability to pay. GW’s student newspaper wrote an excellent article this week that revealed that the university’s stated need-blind admission policy was actually a need-aware practice. The university admitted that it put hundreds of students on its wait list...
March 27, 2013
A Financial Aid Letter That Gets It Right
Many colleges do a horrible job of presenting their financial aid awards in an easy-to-understand way. As I’ve been explaining in my last two posts, I believe this is largely intentional: What’s Wrong With This Financial Aid Letter Evaluating a Financial Aid Award Recognizing this shameful behavior, the federal government has created a financial aid template called the Shopping Sheet....
September 12, 2012
How U.S. News’ College Rankings Can Hurt You
At midnight East Coast time, U.S. News & World Report released its 2013 college rankings. And what a shocker – Harvard and Princeton tied for first in the national university category! Yale came in third. Among liberal arts colleges, Williams got the No. 1 ranking followed by Amherst. Equally shocking. (Please note my sarcasm.) Despite the annual hoopla over these...
June 28, 2012
Why College Costs Are Rising
My favorite higher-ed commentator is Kevin Carey. I’ve got him on my Google Alert because I always enjoy reading anything he writes. Carey recently became director of the education policy program at the New America Foundation, which is a respected think tank in Washington, DC. You can learn more about him here. Carey has no interest in writing about college...
March 9, 2012
Are These Financial Aid Letters Misleading?
If you didn’t see my college blog post from yesterday, I’d urge you to take a peek. I wrote about misleading financial aid awards, which can cause parents to think that a school is going to be more affordable than it really is. Here is the post: What’s Missing From This Financial Aid Letter? Today I want to offer three...
March 8, 2012
What’s Missing From This Financial Aid Letter?
Many financial aid letters — heck almost all of them — are confusing. I’ve always wondered why award letters are so difficult to understand. Perhaps the staffers generating these letters in the bowels of universities have been conversing in financial-aid speak for so long that they have lost their ability to communicate in standard English. Of course, the cynical explanation...
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...
November 27, 2009
Higher-Ed Thanksgiving Story
I was too busy to post on my college blog yesterday because I was struggling with a semi-broken oven as I tried to cook a 22-pound turkey, a pumpkin praline pie (my husband’s favorite), blueberry pie (my son’s favorite) and lots more with low heat. An hour after I put the turkey in the oven it was still pinkish. Oh...