Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described for identifying a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) independently of a channel quality indicator (CQI) table that is configured at a user equipment (UE). A rate matching parameter may be determined based on one or more of the MCS or CQI table, which may be used for dimensioning a soft buffer that is used to store received transmissions for decoding. The MCS field may be a six-bit field and may indicate an MCS that exceeds a highest MCS associated with the CQI table. The base station may activate a semi-persistent scheduling (SPS) configuration at the UE through an activation command, and the UE may verify that SPS is activated based on information in a number of different fields of control information which may include the MCS field.