Rigor in High School Courses Sets Up College Successes You don’t need to read this blog to know that a high school diploma requires a certain number of completed courses for credit, a figure that varies across the country. That makes sense, of course.  There has to be some sort of minimum bar that all […]

Is There A Place For Parents On Campus? The times they are a-changing’ may be a song from the baby-boom era, but it is also a phrase that aptly describes how colleges are treating Gen X parents. Until the 1990s, it was rare for any college or university to think of parents as anything other […]

Achieving College Readiness Across all Demographics College readiness depends largely on opportunity, and it’s important to ensure that students from diverse backgrounds have equal access to opportunity. A first-generation college student, or one coming from an economically challenging situation, may have different college readiness needs than a student from a long line of college graduates. […]

The College Diversity Checklist for High School Students There are many reasons why students may want to know about the level of racial, cultural or ideological diversity on campus while they are touring or researching colleges: for instance, they may be concerned about “fitting in” with others who think, dress or celebrate like them; they […]

College Affordability and “The Middle Class” Squeeze College costs are a problem for the vast majority of parents and students because the dollars required to meet school expectations are often far above and beyond what is available in a family’s monthly budget.  Financial aid is there to close the gap, as schools are quick to […]

Top 5 Mobile Apps to Keep Your Student Organized During the Application Process Applying to college means filling out applications, sending transcripts, taking SATs, requesting recommendation letters, and countless other steps. All of these have to be completed by specific deadlines and different colleges may want differing variations on each. That is why it is […]

Special Questions For Selective Colleges We’ve visited a LOT of college campuses and listened to a LOT of Q&A’s between the students on our tours and the admissions directors with whom we set up informational meetings. So, we thought we’d relay the answers to the questions that seem to concern or confuse students most as […]

College Campus Security Policy Should Continue To Be A Priority Nearly 25 years ago, Constance and Howard Clery (now deceased), endured an unspeakable tragedy.  Their daughter Jeanne, nearing the end of her freshman year at Lehigh University, was brutally raped and murdered by a drug and alcohol abuser, a fellow student whom she had never […]

When University Endowments Go Up, Why Won’t Tuition Go Down? Aided by the recuperating stock market, the financial performance of university endowments was extremely strong in calendar year 2014. While this is welcome news, documented by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), it does beg the question: Why is it that […]

Building Trust Between Colleges and Parents We’ve learned many things during the course of our work at Explore Colleges, and one of them is that presidents of colleges and universities love to talk. They love to talk about the schools they lead, and why they are great. They love to talk about problems facing America […]