RE: Why need low wing trainer?
Scott, at this stage of the process, where you're still learning basic flying skills, I would recommend a Great Planes Venus, which would also fit your budget.
You seem intent on building a kit, which is fine, but the Tigers and the 4-Stars are really advanced trainers with dihedral in the wings. You will always be fighting them on KE and rolling maneuvers because dihedral and rudders don't get along well in axial maneuvers. If you really know what you're doing with a computer radio you can do a lot of mixing to counter these tendencies somewhat, but it takes a very good understanding of your model's flying characteristics, largely based on flying experience, to accomplish this. What you need is a good flying model that doesn't need a ton of tweaking to get it to fly well.
The Venus flies very well and is sturdily built, and you can get into the air and start flying a lot sooner.