Thank you! I’m diving in. 
1 Like
But correct me if I’m wrong, that invested money will continue to grow during that five years.
And if one is worried about a lack of potential growth, they can move the target date out so that it goes from a fixed funding to an equity funding - while you wait the transfer. Would that be correct ?
1 Like
Naturally - depending on the “current” balance, interim earnings may or may not push one over 35k. So at the end there may be even more money left, a “problem” that some might welcome?
Maybe the rest is then kept in the 529 for potential grand children that might still come.
Yes, there is no requirement to make that move early, if that’s the question.
Yes, they can freely change investment choices to meet whatever strategy.
Sure, one could move the 529 from growth investments into money market, if one wants to avoid exceeding 35k in the interim - but then I would first calculate what “costs” more at the end, 10% on an incremental but high compounded return, or losing out on that.
What I’m asking is - since you can move the $6.5k a year tax free - if I want to invest aggressively in the Roth, I can do so now as well til I move the money over.
The only additional cost would be the yearly admin fee the 529 charges.
I may even just take out all and pay the penalty. It’s only on the growth.
Nice to have options.
I’ll definitely pull money out this year.
I’m going to check my som’s balance. It’s his last semester. His fund is 2027 so hopefully it’s seen some growth with the recent market rise.
But he’s going to have a ton left. Like $80k. Ugh
Yes - it all depends on the specific 529. In our case (NJBest), it has a wide range of mainstream investment choices to suit any investment style, and one can switch between and into as many available funds at any time.
If your son’s 529 is somehow committed to an absolute target date, then this might dictate your best strategy.
E.g., if someone’s 529 doesn’t have good choices, someone could even “eat” the penalty, starting annual roll-overs to the Roth immediately while the market is still low, in hopes to more than out-earn the penalty over the course of 5 years.
1 Like
Thank you!
1 Like
One particularly interesting thing I found on the collegetables website was the percentage of students with registered disabilities. The ranges I noticed among schools my D is considering were anywhere from three to about 25 percent. That’s a significant difference! I wonder about the socioeconomic factors behind that as well as the culture around disabilities at individual colleges.
I will play around on a little more on the site. 
Thank you @AustenNut
3 Likes
I also am having a great time exploring the data. One thing - I was checking out Niche student ratings for Pitt and Bama (I always filter to the “terrible” ratings at first, haha). You get the usual range of complaints about food or registering for classes, but I’ve always seen a big complaint with Bama that’s it’s overwhelmingly white.
With Pitt, I saw a couple of kids on Niche complaining that the school had an undeserved reputation for diversity. I checked out the collegetables data on the freshman class, and sure enough, there’s a significant Asian population at Pitt (17%) vs only about 1.4% at Bama. But the Black population is less than 6%, while it’s over 10% at Bama. Hispanic population at Pitt is 7%; it’s 6% at Bama. White population is overwhelming at both - 67 Pitt vs 77 Bama, pretty standard at most PWI institutions.
I’m not reading anything into those numbers, per se. But I do find them interesting.
7 Likes
Requesting help to compare colleges and make final decision to chose between UMD Computer Engineering without honors (60K) Rutgers Computer Engineering Honors (32K)and Schreyers Honors college (32K)and Johns Hopking Computer Enginerring.(85K) .
We are trying to go beyond just cost of attendance but look into the AP credits and if that saves money and time overall. Since she has 16 AP classes she would have a good amount of college credits to begin with.
D23 is motivated to do combined undergrad and grad like Integrated Undergraduate-Graduate degree and then PhD if possible. Looks like UMD, Schreyers and Rutgers have it.
Any suggestions about how to do this is very much appreciated!
1 Like
As others before have commented, Penn State is a very good engineering school. I’m not sure what an integrated masters provides to a student who is considering a PhD.
The PhD decision is a separate one and kids may change their mind over time. What you want to look for is the opportunity to do research. Your daughter will get that in spades as a Schreyer student.
She can do her PhD in CE or CS at Hopkins or any other school at no cost.
4 Likes
She can pursue Phd after graduate school right? Sorry if I sound too ignorant. I have heard some people doing in other fields such as Pharmacy after undergraduate not sure if that is true for Computer science or Engineering. I think having a graduate degree helps to get into PhD. Please correct me if I am wrong.
1 Like
Does schools provide this kind of information before we commit? Give us an idea about cost and time needed to graduate after factoring her AP credits. We are looking in their websites. For Example UMD says it requires 124 credits to graduate from their clark school of engineering with computer engineering as their major. So would her AP Biology or AP economics credits count towards that? We are trying to go to the admitted students days to all these schools but some of the events are already at capacity. Not sure how to proceed.
1 Like
No, you go to graduate school to get a PhD.
In the US, Bachelor’s degree = undergraduate.
MS and PhD = graduate school.
2 Likes
Thanks for clarification.
1 Like
I think it might be difficult to have a guarantee on which AP credit they’ll take for what before May 1st. Most schools have an office that receives the AP scores and transcripts and allots the credit, but that won’t happen until summer. Departments also have specific rules about classes in their major sequence and how AP or dual credit is counted. You might call the school’s admissions and records and see if they can get you started.
Well…does your daughter have the same very healthy 529? If not, you can likely give some of this to her for her schooling.
We are working on getting the information before we commit. So who should we contact?
1 Like
Edit. To @swan1 sorry @thumper1
My son had 36 credits coming in. Still took four years. All AP is not equal when it comes to engineering. There’s a course sequence to be followed.
Clearly Hopkins is in a class by it’s own here but yes it’s expensive. Outcomes are likely to be good at all these.
If money is an issue, I’d go PSU. Not necessarily Honors though. That depends on - after your student reviews the Honors curriculum and requirements, is it ok for them ? It’s not for everyone.
Rutgers is fine but I hear a lot of stories of taking buses across campus to class.
UMD is strong but again for you it’s double the price of others. Does it matter ?
I’d say it goes Hopkins > UMD > PSU AND Rutgers but PSU has honors.
But for getting a PHD or even career, I’m not sure Hopkins is worth the extra $$. All will put out well paid grads.
1 Like
Yea that’s my plan but likely not needed.
I will be checking into the Roth idea (with equal funding) and I’m guessing both kids at some point will be in grad school although my engineer might be part time and have some tuition assistance.
Life is long. Extra in the 529 is a fortunate situation !!! If you asked me even 6 years ago I would not have known how inexpensively relative to what I saw and heard college turned out to be. Not inexpensive but just vs expectations.
It’s still better it was well planned for…
The best part is we put aside $225 a month so it didn’t kill us. But our fidelity credit card put 2% of spend directly into the account so we were able to grow a nice nest egg over 15 years without pain. For those thinking about saving it’s a nice option although I think fidelity is down to 1.5%. Wells Fargo does 2% but that’s to you, not directly into a 529 although one could manually use it to fund a 529.
4 Likes
Here is UMD’s sample CE program. Most other schools have similar flowcharts. You can see where they give AP credit.