Education & Opportunity

For those of you who have been regular readers of my column in The Oregonian each week, here's a sneak peak at a special event I'm hosting in Portland on Nov. 9, 2008, at the Oregon Convention Center. It's called "The City of College Dreams" and I've been hard at work on it for the past two years. Here's a blurb from the forthcoming official event announcement:

"From coast to coast across America, Ben Kaplan’s City of College Dreams program is reinventing and revolutionizing financial aid night as we know it. First, students and parents participate in an interactive group learning session with Ben Kaplan, the acclaimed author and speaker who has helped tens of thousands of college-bound families save more than half a billion dollars over the past 10 years.

Then, each participant puts this new knowledge into immediate action by exploring our “City of College Dreams”--a traveling metropolis of national and local college funding opportunities and school success resources. Take a stroll down “Scholarship Boulevard” and collect dozens of scholarship applications that fit your goals. Or drop by “Financial Aid Avenue” or “Student Loan Lane” and comparison shop for the best deals. Other featured streets in our "college city" include:

• College Savings Road
• Related Expenses Way
• College Planner Place
• Test Prep Circle
• Study Abroad Square
• Athletic Scholarships Street
• Summer Opportunity Highway
• Dorm Room Drive

With more than 60,000 square feet of state-of-the-art resources and tuition-saving wisdom, each one-day event brings to area families the largest and most technologically advanced paying-for-college guidance center in the world."

Tickets are free, but because space is limited you'll want to reserve your seat right away. We'll be launching the event website later in May, so for the time being, send an e-mail to portland [at] benkaplan.org and we'll put you on the pre-registration list and remind you when tickets are available.

(Note that the above e-mail address is displayed with an "[at]" in place of an "@" sign. We do this to make it harder for spammers to get our e-mail address. When you actually send us an e-mail, use the traditional "@" sign so that our address is in the following format: name@domain.com ). 

Thanks for your interest and I hope to see you at this exciting event!