Reply to Virginia Tech gets 1,000 more freshman than last year

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]They can try to get students to start in the summer and offer classes into the night, but they can only fit so many students in their dorms and their cafeteria.  I've heard from a Va Tech junior that their lines in the cafeteria are already terrible.[/quote]
Least of the problems. You can preorder food from so many different places as part of the dining plan and just do a fast pick up. Might be different for boy who eat more and need the all-you-care-to eat Dining hall.
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Dorms on campus and dining hall meals with friends are a major part of the college experience, especially as a freshman. [b]Of course there are options, but that’s not what these kids signed up for. [/b][/quote]

We just went to a VT visit day for high school juniors. This was in March. They were absolutely touting the dorms, the requirement for freshman to live on campus, and how great campus life is. They certainly seemed to think it was an important part of the VT experience. [b]For them to so completely change their tune a few weeks later is awful.[/quote][/b]

Did it ever occur to you that just too many people who were accepted said "yes".  Go back and read the article.  The admissions office even had a consultant team in this past year to work on algorithms to guesstimate how many students of the accepted class would actually enroll.  Obviously they didn't take into account the fact that most parents, especially in Virginia, are waking up to the fact that they simply cannot afford 70K - 80K a year in after-tax dollars for private for four or five years.[/quote]

NP: That might be how they want to frame it, but they way undershoot and overshoot yield every other year and do it in equal magnitude (last year they way thought more would say yes than did), aren't getting much better at it.    Sure getting yield right is hard, but VT is consistently worse at it than comparable schools (both public VA schools and other tech schools) and since half the time their problem--including last year--is that the expect more kids to say yes than actually do, it[b] can't be about what a great deal they are.  And it's not like their applications soared--they just consistently get their predictions--predictions that every college has to make every year--more wrong than others tend to. Other  colleges undershoot by less regularly and overshoot very occasionally--but are careful how much they overshoot because it's a bigger problem.  Undershooting just gets solved by waitlists.  [/quote][/b]

It is a great deal.  Instate Virginians pay an annual total price of $26,240 to attend Virginia Tech on a full time basis. This fee is comprised of $11,093 for tuition, $8,920 room and board, $1,150 for books and supplies and $2,137 for other fees.  That is 45% less than other Virginia state universities.  Now top privates are as high as $76K-$80K a year, and more than half of our nation's college students take 5 or 6 years to complete.  MC and UMC Parents cannot pay these outrageous private tuitions, so they go in-state, and obviously, VT is the state school for engineering, computer science, data science, etc.  This result you are seeing happened because more parents than ever before said "You got into VT; we can only afford $26K a year for four years, we have to have reserves for a) grad school; b) our own retirement; c) taking care of elderly parents".  Our DS had the dilemma of deciding between Georgia Tech, Purdue, VT and UVA.  We let him decide but he knew that money was tight, especially since we've already put one child thru college and have two more going into the system.

If you read the article you will see that the admissions office hired a consultant practice to help them accept the right number of students.  If there is any blame to be had it is assigned to those consultants.  No school wants a problem like this.  My own SLAC was oversubscribed and I wound up in a forced triple and many students in motels in the area around the school. We were miserable and it was not the freshman experience I wanted.

It's very simple.  More families/students accepted offers than the consultant's algorithm said would.  My guess is that the consultant couldn't feel the pulse of what is happening in all of the Virginia, California, Michigan and Texas schools.  Parents want their children to get into these schools because of the obscene cost of the privates.  AND more and more you see that students need a master's degree on top of the four year degree.  Parents need to save for that as well.[/quote]

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