Tag Archives: lynn o’shaughnessy

A Review: Shrinking the Cost of College

Today I will be reviewing Lynn O’Shaughnessy’s new book: Shrinking the Cost of College–152 ways to cut the cost of a bachelors degree.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy,  is an author, a college blogger and speaker. She writes about college strategies for TheCollegeSolutionBlog and CBSMoneyWatch. She gives presentations about college strategies for schools, companies and financial advisory firms.  Lynn also wrote The College Solution, which is an Amazon.com bestseller.

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Using facts and figures, Lynn explains clearly and simply where college money comes from and how to maximize your efforts to get the most money for a college education.

In the introduction of her book, Lynn states:

Billions of dollars of aid are available to students who attend college. About two out of three full-time college students receive grants, otherwise known as scholarships, to attend school. At private colleges, a whopping 82% receive scholarships…Most people look in the wrong place for help when they begin contemplating the looming college tab.

Her book systematically explains how the system works and how every parent can arm their arsenal of knowledge to help find and maximize the money that is out there. At the end of each chapter is a “To Do List” to point you in the right direction and help you gather all the information necessary to make the best financial decisions. Each chapter provides tips and “bottom line” information making it easy to apply and carry out each step in the process.

Lynn explains state grants, government grants, and private college scholarships. Her explanation of financial aid and how it works makes it easy to understand the most complicated of formulas. She explains where to find the data and how to analyze it to find the colleges that will provide the maximum financial aid to your college-bound teen. As a parent, this one tip alone will make the college application process less stressful and help to ease the college sticker price fears.

And finally, she explains the financial aid award letter and what to do when the letter arrives; walking you through how to analyze the award and how to handle an appeal for more money.

Here are just 10 tips from the book that will help you shrink the cost of college:

  1. Learn which 60 schools offer the best financial aid packages.
  2. Discover where you will find the biggest source of scholarship cash.
  3. Find out why 82% of students at private schools receive merit scholarships and how your child can.
  4. Learn why college sticker prices are meaningless and what that means for you.
  5. Understand how teens can win academic scholarships despite mediocre SAT/ACT scores.
  6. Get the list of 800+ colleges that don’t care about test scores.
  7. Discover how to attend out-of-state public universities for in-state prices.
  8. The most expensive colleges can be cheaper than your own state universities.
  9. You can make $200,000 and still qualify for significant need-based aid at pricey colleges.
  10. Students can win college money by using geography.

Every parent should grab a copy of this Ebook to add to their arsenal of college information. You can also chat with Lynn live on Twitter during an upcoming #CollegeChat June 1 at 6PM PST.

The College Search: Here's Where to Look

Today’s guest blog post is by Lynn O’Shaughnessy,  an author, a college blogger and speaker. She writes about college strategies for
TheCollegeSolutionBlog and CBSMoneyWatch.
She gives presentations about college strategies for schools, companies and financial advisory firms.  Lynn wrote The College Solution, which is an Amazon.com bestseller. The College Solution includes countless tips on college admissions, SAT/ACT strategies, college scholarships, financial aid and much more.

Where do you find a great college?

I hear that question all the time.

You can pour through the big fat college guides from folks like the Princeton Review and Fiske, but frankly they ignore most schools. For instance, Princeton Review’s latest guide covers 371 schools, but there are more than 2,200 four-year colleges and universities in this country.

What I’m going to quickly share with you today is one valuable resource, America’s Best Colleges from Forbes Magazine, that people can use to find hidden educational gems in their own regions.

The rankings created by Forbes and the nonprofit Center for College Affordability and Productivity include many colleges that the guidebooks don’t cover.

What I find especially helpful for teenagers searching for colleges is that the college rankings are also broken down by four regions – Northeast, Midwest, South and West.  A lot parents don’t want their teens going to college too far from home, but often they don’t know what schools exist beyond the public institutions in their own state.

This week, I sent the Midwest college list to my niece who lives in St. Louis and the Western list to my nephew who lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

The Western list includes instantly recognizable schools like Cal Tech and Stanford, but other highly ranked institutions include College of Idaho, George Fox University and St. Mary’s College of California. The latter two were ranked higher than UCLA or Berkeley. The Midwestern list includes such overlooked jewels as Doane College in Nebraska, College of Wooster in Ohio and Earlham College in Indiana.

You can learn more about Forbes’ list by reading a blog post that I wrote for CBSMoneyWatch entitled, The Best Colleges You’ve Never Heard Of.

I hope the Forbes’ rankings inspire you to look beyond the most obvious spots for great colleges. To find the best academic and financial fits today, families need to be casting much wider nets.

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