Better Understand the Cost of Colleges with Benji Buddy

Keep Yourself Out of the Insurmountable Debt! 

Parents looking for help understanding the challenges faced by high school-aged children about to transition to college should look to add Benji Buddy to their list of essentials. The app, made by Technology Ripples, LLC for the iOS platform, intends to help parents and students better understand the costs of college, as well as the potential earnings in a student’s goal profession after graduation.

At the beginning, users are able to log into Benji Buddy using their email address, or their Facebook profile, if they’re comfortable doing so. After logging in, users are given the option to select from hundreds of potential professions from over two-dozen categories, including Medical, Business, or Management careers. The users are then able to pick potential schools that they are interested in, and can do so by area, major or program. Users will then input the amount of loans, tuition savings plans and scholarships that the potential student has received.

Benji Buddy will then spit out a graph that compares debt to the amount of money made after graduation. The first four bars on the graph will grow evenly over the course of the first four years of school, and then gradually drop as loans are expected to be repaid. In addition, a line graph shows the expected income, flat the first four years, and then jumping to average and rising gradually over the course of the rest of the years of repayment and professional life. Additionally, using the social features gives the user the chance to get better ideas of schooling and professions available, using Facebook friends as examples. Users can see what schools their friends went to, and what occupations they work in now. This is one of the most beneficial aspects for parents of teenagers who don’t have a clue what school they want to go to or what they want to do with their lives. Parents being able to look at where their most successful friends went to school, and what they have done and do with their degree. This can help them to steer their children in the right direction.

One of the major cons of Benji Buddy was that it didn’t differentiate between two-year associates, four-year baccalaureate, and post-graduate/doctorate studies. Most schools will offer multiple length programs, but there wasn’t a very discernable way to differentiate between them in the selection of schools. Students will likely miss this very crucial key to the functionality of the app, but parents are more likely to understand that if their children want to become doctors, the app may not be very helpful in calculating repayment costs over time.

Overall, Benji Buddy helps students to keep themselves out of the insurmountable debt that is rapidly overcoming a lot of graduates from colleges across the country. Students are able to take a solid, straightforward look at the costs of different schools, and the benefits of the different degrees offered against the average income of earners in the professional field. The app’s Facebook connections help students plan by offering them the opportunity to find out who they know at which school, so they can connect with them to better understand the benefits of going to school there. Plus it helps keep kids from enrolling in programs they can’t ever hope to pay back after they live.