Overenrolled Colleges

@JustGraduate, thank you!

I don’t know official numbers but my rising sophomore at Northeastern is one of many upperclassmen still not assigned housing and the fb group has had several posts from parents of incoming freshmen in the same predicament. The university sent an email boasting about a new building with apartment-style units they have just secured but it is a 30 minute train ride away from campus! - clearly a sign that they are taking drastic measures to accommodate an over-enrollment.

Colorado School of Mines is over enrolled. The school is already short housing for all the students. My daughter and her room mate will be a sophomores and they will be getting a frosh in their double now triple.

Get a discount on the room. Will see how it goes.

My sophomore daughters school is over enrolled too. She was all in a tizzy her double could have a third student placed in it. Luckily it’s still a double so she was spared.

Holy Cross is over enrolled with about 800 incoming freshmen. The target is usually closer to 750.

The University of South Carolina has placed some of their freshmen in nearby apartments because they did not have enough housing for all freshmen.

It seems like more and more students are continuing to crowd into top schools every year.

lol when i was there they stuck me in a quad and still charged full housing price

Drexel University expected about 2400 students for the incoming class and got 3500 acceptances. With summer melt they were expecting 3100ish to come. They had a dorm they shuttered last year and were deciding what to do with it - maybe turn in it into administrative space so now they can just re-open it as a dorm. Not sure if that will be enough.

Yes top schools are getting inundated and yield is increasing on all of them to historical highs.

Am hearing VT will be discounting room rates for those staying in lounges converted to dorms, and maybe for doubles turned into triples. They are also putting roommates in with RA’s which is not typically done. Have heard 20% mentioned as the discount and a lot of sophomores staying on in dorms are quite happy to take the deal. Have not seen this in writing but getting info from someone who should know

What should colleges do in an overenrollment situation? The available options all have some negative impact:

a. Stricter application of conditions of admission. UCI did this, with significant backlash.
b. Encourage deferrals. This means a smaller admission class the following year, and perhaps more yield unpredictability due to unknown “melt” among those who take the deferral offer.
c. Enroll more than planned for, with overcrowded housing, not enough space in popular classes, greater restrictions on declaring popular majors, etc… for the extra large class.

Purdue is putting freshmen in hotel, converted dorm rooms/closets and study lounges.

Georgia Tech yield exceeded their predictions according to the counselor GT Minute given to us in May. They anticipated “summer melt” would get the school to the numbers it had to be at for the entering freshman class. In light of the higher yield, they told us that in all likelihood they would not take any students from the waitlist.

Where are all the students coming from? I imagine so colleges must therefore be under-enrolled? Do under-enrolled, 2017-low-yield-colleges have their own thread?

“I imagine so colleges must therefore be under-enrolled?”

I have wondered the same thing. Either there are more students in total, or there are less spots available at universities and colleges, or somewhere there are schools that are under-enrolled.

If I had to guess, I would guess that expensive lesser ranked schools might be having trouble getting students. I haven’t seen this written down anywhere however.

I’m wondering where all the money is coming from. It the past it seemed that more would go to these schools if they had the money, but that the schools only grant so much in FA and merit aid. If the schools are short 100 dorm rooms, are they also short 100 merit scholarships, 100 need based grants?

“Somewhere there are schools that are under-enrolled”

Isn’t the NACAC openings list basically a list of under-enrolled schools?

As for where the money comes from, it’s going to depend on who is over-enrolling. Most schools are need-aware. When a college puts an application in the “give them a lot of money” pile, they expect the yield in that pile to be higher than the “pay full price” pile. Over-enrolled out of state or international students are more likely to be in the second pile. Federal grants and loans will still be available for everyone, too.

@twoinanddone

Unless the college offers full tuition scholarships and those recipients are the ones who chose to enroll in greater than expected numbers, there will still be an incremental amount of tuition received from each student.

A news story on July 24 cited even bigger numbers:

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/education/article163427713.html

They are attributing the problem, in part, to the decision to end the early decision program, which formerly accounted for about 25% of each class. Obviously the yield is more predictable with ED admits, but less predictable with RD.