Why we built a calculator first.
ost of what gets sold to teenagers about college sounds like marketing. Glossy brochures. Per-square-foot dorm comparisons. Career-services placement rates that mean nothing because nobody defines placement.
We started with the part nobody puts in the brochure: the math.
We pulled the public data — FREOPP, IPEDS, BEA — that the schools themselves report. We compounded the cost of attendance against the median earnings of program graduates. We adjusted for the regional cost of living, because $50,000 in Cleveland isn't $50,000 in San Francisco.
The result is at /worth-it. It will tell you, for the school you're considering, whether the math holds. It does not tell you what to do — that's not our job — but it makes the trade-off visible in a way brochure language can't.
3,392
four-year U.S. colleges run through the calculator. FREOPP earnings on 1,661 of them; the rest fall back to the BLS national median.
What's coming next.
This is product one of more. The shape of LE TEEN is a portfolio of small, sharp, data-grounded tools for teenagers trying to make five-figure decisions on brochure-grade information. The calculator is the first because it's the most visible failure mode of the existing market.
Some of what's next is on /tools.