Here's How It's Worked Out For Us So Far...
II. POSTER KIDS
I learned the skills I teach in this site by helping our son Gregory find effective colleges that we could all really afford. We're a middle income family from Poulsbo, Washington; Greg was interested in electrical engineering and music; and my goal was to find a list of colleges that really fit his needs and that required minimal student and parent debt. I had discovered Net Price Calculator programs in 2009, and they were central to our college search.
Greg ultimately matriculated as an electrical engineering major in the Tufts University School of Engineering in the fall of 2013. He graduated in May of '17 with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering along with a minor in Music Engineering with a concentration in Electronic Musical Instrument Design. While at Tufts, Greg stayed active in music, recording three EPs with his band "Shark Saddle" and also recording four solo EPs and one LP.
Greg is now working as a project manager for Daimler Trucks North America in Portland, Oregon. But Greg has also continued his music career - writing, performing, producing, and recording with a number of bands. And, just for fun, here's an example where Greg's playing lead guitar on a "Sweet Home" medley with "Joel Gibson Jr and the Hired Guns":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdTZssoGRFU
Tufts is an expensive private school with very generous aid. Its NPC results indicated that we should expect Greg to accumulate about $16,000 in total student loans in his four years there, with no parent loans required. That was about half the total loans we expected at the three state universities - two in our home state - where Greg was accepted. But the final results at Tufts were better than that. No parent loans were required, but Greg's student loans were $5,000 less than we expected, a total of $11,000 over his four years there. So, Greg's total loans were less than one-third of the national average, and his resulting student loan payments are just about $110 per month.
Words, as you might expect, cannot describe how pleased Katia and I are with Greg's experience on "The Hill."
Thank you, Tufts University, and go Jumbos!
While I'm at it, I ought to mention our daughter Maria, the lovely young lady standing next to the old guy in the picture below. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in May of 2019. At Trinity, Maria carried two majors - Math and Urban Studies, as well as two minors - Russian and Models & Data. She also tutored other students, she worked two years with disadvantaged youth at the YMCA in downtown Hartford, she spent a semester abroad in the "Math in Moscow" program, she was an active a cappella singer, and 2019 was her third summer doing rocket science in Los Angeles. At Trinity, Maria also earned a Phi Beta Kappa key, and this year she's teaching English in Russia on a Fulbright at the Tomsk State University of Architecture and Building. After that, Maria expects to enroll in the Applied Math PhD program at Northwestern University.
Like Tufts University, Trinity College is an expensive private school with honestly generous financial aid, and Maria's final financial numbers at Trinity turned out to be almost exactly equal to Greg's at Tufts.
So, Katia and I are thrilled with Maria's years at "The Summit", and we can only say "Thank you, Trinity College!" and "Go Bantams!" More text coming...
More text coming...