What do I need to use College Cost?

The sticker; The aid, sorted; The family math; The candidate schools.

Is College Cost free to use?

Yes — run it free in the browser playground (no API key needed for the sponsored trial, or bring any provider key), or install it into Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT and more via npx pm-claude-skills. MIT-licensed and open source.

College Cost

Q: How do I know the College Cost output is good?

The skill verifies itself against its own quality checks: The letter is sorted before the math — no loan counted as aid; Renewal conditions produce a conservative-case run beside the hopeful one; The monthly tail appears with the loan-to-income framing; Comparisons use identical assumptions with each school's own aid.

🔵 Stable🕐 updated 2026-07-18 🔷 SkillSpec L3 ⚙ ships an executable helper pm-calculators

Compute what a degree will actually cost — sticker minus real aid, inflated per year, split into cash and loans, with the loan's decade-long monthly tail made visible before enrollment instead of after. Use when asked what will college really cost, compare these two offers' real prices, how much loan payment after graduation, or is this school affordable. Produces the all-in number from the script, the offer-letter decode (grants vs loans untangled), the monthly-tail reality check, and the two-school comparison.

▶ Run it free — no key needed 📝 Grade your existing draft View SKILL.md ↗

What to give it

▸The sticker — full cost of attendance (tuition + room/board + fees, not tuition alone — the letter's fine print has it)

▸The aid, sorted — the award letter's actual lines; anything ambiguous gets decoded ("award" ≠ grant until proven), and renewal conditions noted (GPA floors, year-one-only grants — the classic bait)

▸The family math — what's payable in cash per year without borrowing; the gap is the loan share

▸The candidate schools — for comparisons, each letter, same treatment

✅ The bar it holds itself to

Every skill in this library self-verifies — these are this skill's own quality checks, straight from its definition.

✓The letter is sorted before the math — no loan counted as aid

✓Renewal conditions produce a conservative-case run beside the hopeful one

✓The monthly tail appears with the loan-to-income framing

✓Comparisons use identical assumptions with each school's own aid

✓The fifth-year risk and graduation-rate homework are named

⚠️ What it refuses to do

Do not accept "total aid" as a discount — the sort is the whole skill

Do not model tuition flat — it inflates faster than most things families budget with

Do not present the total without the monthly tail — the decade is the decision

Do not compare letters as written — they're formatted to resist exactly that

Do not editorialize school choice — price it honestly; worth is the family's call

Install

npx pm-claude-skills add --agent claude   # or codex · cursor · gemini · hermes
# or one-line MCP (every skill, any client):
claude mcp add pm-skills -- npx -y pm-claude-skills-mcp

Related skills

🔌 Embed this skill

Drop this on your blog, docs, or site — it renders a "Run this skill" card:

<div data-pm-skill="college-cost"></div>
<script src="https://mohitagw15856.github.io/pm-claude-skills/embed.js" async></script>

💬 Discussion

College Cost is one of 630 open-source professional AI agent skills — all SkillSpec L3. Try them all in the browser · ⭐ Star on GitHub · Browse the full catalog