My son and I were talking about the overenrolled class at WashU this morning, as he has a couple of classmates headed there. He thinks that all these overenrolled colleges got exactly the yield they wanted, to make up for extra Covid spending and decreased revenue last year. Thoughts?
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two 5s and two 4s, and one of those 5s is BC calc! she is so proudāworked hard for the A both semesters but this is icing on the cake.
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I think it all goes back to test optional and confusion over Common App reporting that unique applicants were relatively flat overall - that just didnāt apply to top (100-ish) schools. TO really did significantly increase the pool of unique/individual qualified applicants, and moreover, likely messed with yield algorithms. My guess is the āexpertsā are not yet ready to admit to the significance of the TO change. Almost every school Iāve heard about in the top 100, including all three of my college kidsā schools (two of which are ranked well beyond 50), has a bumper crop of freshmen.
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I always love a good conspiracy theory! 
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Does anyone know the max annual contribution for 529 for each child? Weāve never put away more than what I would consider the max. I googled but there are only references to grandparents gifting, etc., which we know thereās a $15k max fed limit before tax implications. Would a parent contribution be treated the same as grandparent gifting?
Iām just trying to see if I should just put more money in the kids plan so that itāll grow tax-free since at this point, Iām confident they will go to college 
D20ās sophomore Wash U friend is in an apartment. Do a lot of students move off campus after first year?
If I recall you are able to frontload using something like 5 yearsā worth of the annual exclusion without facing gift tax. So with a 15k annual exclusion you should be able to put 75k into the 529 up front with no issues.
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I would say at bigger schools it is very common, especially when they canāt promise dorm space beyond freshman year (some schools have lottery systems for upperclassmen to request on campus housing). None of my kids have wanted to live on campus beyond freshman year. I suppose the culture might be different at some schools, especially small schools where they can accommodate more students on campus and also perhaps rely on that revenue stream. Maybe also with schools that have sketchy surrounding areas and where the school creates kind of a bubble for students on campus.
Suspending our disbelief for a bit, letās assume, probably, schools consult with outside data firms to anticipate and manage this yield number. These firms had different data this year, but less data? I donāt know. Firms would, at a guess, be incentivized to get to that number the college wants to be at.
Yields which are ātoo highā are still probably in the schoolās best interest. Not so for students, what with overcrowded dorms, difficulty getting classes, etc. Perfect cover story this year, if they could manage this? And weāre all just waiting around to hear confirmation that unscrupulous people have double depositedā¦
Going a little over enrollment targets can be absorbed and increases revenue, but serious overenrollment creates a PR and logistical nightmare with housing, dining, classes, advising, etc. Virginia Tech wayyy over shot in 2019 (due to various factors including admissions ineptitude imho) and had to buy out several area hotels to house the overflowing freshman class. Busses were crowded, classes were crowded, etc. Then they would have to decide to underenroll the next year to make up for it or to let that admissions bump ride its way through the system (which then impacts the surrounding community). My point is, serious overenrollment is not the desirable situation that one might initially think it is.
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Looks like that VA Tech class was almost 14% larger, which could have a huge impact. But 5-10% at a smaller school? When upper class numbers have already been impacted due to gap years taken?
There were 150 kids misplaced from those dorms at WashU. Class of 2024 is about 1900. Less than 10% increase in yield. I wonder if this holds true at other schools that are overenrolled. Could that āoops!ā coming from admission offices really be a little more disingenuous than it seems? I havenāt been tracking it, but there doesnāt seem to be much info at all coming from the AOs.
Iām not saying my kidās right, but he does view things more easily from a big data angle than I do.
Each plan is different and depending on the state you can get a deduction that may be capped. For instance, Illinoisā Bright Start plan has a max per year of 10k for a single parent or 20k for married total regardless of how many children you have that you can deduct, however, you can put in more than that in the plan. I canāt remember offhand if there are maximums anymore. When we had an Iowa plan for my son when these plans first came into existence, the max back then was only 2k. States with no income tax donāt even have the benefit of the deduction so many people then just look for plans in other states that have better plans altogether.
Also, if grandparents have their own plans for a grandchild, they took (in IL for instance) can give the 10k/20k and get the state tax deduction.
We max out our plan even now while my kids are in college, at the same time weāre taking out the money. The deduction while nominal is still worth something and the tax free growth is something. If thereās money leftover (which Iām pretty sure there wonāt be) then we will pass it on to my nieces or nephews and just have my siblings give us cash. Or, save it for a grandchild of our own.
Could be. Itās a small school, so I would think 10% would be significant. If theyāre trying to backfill after lower enrollment last year, then sure. Your kid is privy to big data related to this scenario? Or maybe thatās a saying to indicate ābig pictureā? At this point I really donāt trust what most admissions people say. Itās so PR driven that itās hard to get an honest answer. When Virginia Tech overenrolled they kept saying things like āitās a good problem to haveā and āitās because of the positive impact of the new Innovation campusā etc. People close to the situation knew it was because it was a new admissions team who had drastically changed the application process and didnāt know what they were doing yield-wise. This year I feel like admissions became more of a black box than ever. And yes, some schools may be perfectly happy to squish more students into study rooms in dorms if they can recoup some of the lost housing revenue from last year!
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Thanks everyone! I think Iāll just go ahead and split my annual bonus between the two kids. In CA, thereās no tax perks with putting $ in the plan other than it has tax-free gains.
Yep, Iām not picking on WashU necessarily. I think this might be true at many schools. Maybe not the bigger state schools like Purdue, at 12% up, ouch. But I have no doubt that even my kidsā private high school would overenroll by 5% this year if they could.
No, of course he is not privy to the big data going into these calculations. But he works with a lot of big data in the programming he does. He would dispute the idea that colleges didnāt have good data this year. They just might have needed to buy it from different places. I would never have considered these high yields as being the intentional product of an equation. Like most of us, to me it just seemed like a miscalculation, no?
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One nice thing about Miami of Ohio is that they lock in Tuition Room and Board for all 4 years. So no price increase once a student enrolls.
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Ohio State does that, but only for in-state students 
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UIUC does that as well.
Purdue hasnāt raised tuition in a while which is one reason it is so desirable for people, as it is a bargain for OOS.
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Not related to our kiddos, but does anyone know how to get rid of all these CC pop up ads that crop up every time I log in? I donāt know if itās something new to CC or because I am using a new computer but it is driving me insane.
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Tag @CC_Mike in your post.