The Three R’s · Resilience, Return, Right Fit
Before your family spends $100,000 on the next four years, run it through three questions.
I am Kathy Kamburis. An engineer first, then twenty years teaching math in a classroom, and since 2018 the owner of a tutoring center where I sit down with about a hundred families a year. I have run this decision three times at my own kitchen table.
Free · six pages · one email, not a series of nine
Dripping Springs, Texas
01 Resilience
Will this path still exist in ten years?
02 Return
Does the math work for our family?
03 Right fit
Does it actually fit this child?
Why me
I am not a college consultant. I have been in the room.
A consultant reads about families. I sit down with about a hundred of them a year, and I have done that every year since 2018. That is on top of twenty years in a classroom before it. I meet this decision on a Tuesday afternoon, in person, with the child sitting right there.
Kathy Kamburis, owner, Noble Tutoring & Prep
01
Twenty years
Teaching math in a classroom.
Starting in 1999, about two decades of it: high school through AP Statistics, Pre-Calculus and Algebra II, plus four semesters at UT Austin training elementary teachers to teach math and science. I also started the engineering program at Dripping Springs High School.
02
Since 2018
Running my own tutoring center.
Noble Tutoring & Prep started at my dining room table and now runs two locations with about twenty certified teachers. About a hundred families a year, every year, which is eight years of watching what actually happens in junior and senior year, and which plans hold up.
03
Before that
Civil engineering.
Runway redesign and construction at O’Hare and Midway, environmental consulting in Chicago, roadway studies for the Iowa DOT. I know exactly what a technical career asks of a person, because I had one my father chose for me and I quietly disliked it.
04
At home
Four children.
Three launched on three different paths, and a twelve year old who has me thinking about all of it again. I skipped the Right Fit question with one of mine and it cost us. I teach that filter from experience, not theory.
The part nobody says out loud
The default was the riskiest option on the board.
Four year college, undeclared, figure it out later. It is the plan most families fall into without ever calling it a plan, and it is the one nobody runs the numbers on. The three questions are not an argument against college. They are the order in which any option, college included, has to answer for itself.
38%
of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education, down from 57 percent in 2015.
Gallup, June 2026
13%
employment drop for ages 22 to 25 in the jobs most exposed to AI.
Stanford Digital Economy Lab with ADP, 2025
My father is a bridge engineer with a master’s degree. He picked civil engineering for me. Years later he looked at my own seventeen year old and told me to send him into the trades.
He was right, and it took me a while to admit it.
Start here, free
The Future-Proof Path Guide
The default plan is not a plan. For most families it is the most expensive option on the board, and nobody ever ran the numbers on it.
Six pages, and it is the short version of what I teach: the three questions, in order, with the worksheets I actually use. Print it and work through it at your kitchen table in about twenty minutes.
01. The Resilience rubric, four things that make a career hard to automate, with scored examples from business admin to nursing
02. The six line cost worksheet, including the line most families miss and the option of staying home
03. Six questions to ask your child before you ask about any school
04. A one page scorecard so every option ends up side by side
Send me the Guide
Free. One email, not a series of nine.
I will send the guide, and occasionally something else worth your time. Unsubscribe any time.
Eight weeks, live, capped at fifteen families
When you are ready to actually decide
The guide gets you a clear comparison. It will not sit at your table.
What three questions cannot do is settle it when you and your child disagree about what the answers mean, or tell you which blank on that worksheet is the one that is going to cost you.
The Future-Proof Path Blueprint is a small cohort of parents working through this together, live, over eight weeks. Every family leaves with a written Family Pathway Plan.
Founding Families Cohort begins Wednesday 16 September
Free, twenty minutes, phone or video. No email required to view the dates.
Best of Dripping Springs 2025
Best Tutor
B.S.
Civil Engineering, Iowa
M.ED.
STEM Education, UT Austin
BOARD
Dripping Springs Education Foundation
Kathy Kamburis.
Helping families in Dripping Springs and Austin choose a path after high school that is worth choosing.
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© 2026 Kathy Kamburis · Owner, Noble Tutoring & Prep
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