MidwestMom2Kids_

My daughter is heading to U Texas. There are many healthy options in the cafeterias. And food purchased using the meal plan "dine in dollars" (swiping your ID card) is inexpensive.
http://www.utexas.edu/student/housin...scode=5&id=609
$3.56 for all you can eat lunch, $3.93 for all you can eat dinner.
Soup, salad bar, fresh fruit, veggies, cafeteria entrees, typical stuff...

They seem to provide a lot of options, but I know it will start to seem monotonous. Everyone has extra "bevo bucks" that can be used at dozens of local restaurants (when you get tired of cafeteria food) plus at CVS and other local stores.

The price for a dorm room is $7600 per year and includes $1200 in "dine in dollars" and $300 in "bevo bucks."

I think the cafeteria food is a bargain. Plus

Time2

For a generic question such as this, I doubt there will ever be a 'one size fits all' answer that applies to every college.

Some colleges require freshman to live in the dorm and often those rooms don't have/allow cooking (fire safety, sanitary issues, etc.).

One thing not has yet mentioned is that of all the adjusting one needs to do during their freshman year (i.e. living away from home for the first time, time management skills, etc.) one BIG advantage is having prepared (and reasonably healthy) food available daily in the cafeteria which is hard to quantify in dollars/cents. When I went to college, most students had never washed their own clothes much less setup and managed daily meal planning. I would believe there is a tendency to cut corners and perhaps eat far too much 'fast food' if you are left to your own in preparing daily meals when you first start college.

I think the answer also changes as you progress in college, learn time mgt skills and can see how much spare time you would have for meal preparation. Just one more thing to put into your equation since I think the answer is more than a dollars/cents calculation.

cptofthehouse

The bottom line is if you are living in a place with kitchen facilities, can get to a grocery store with reasonable prices regularly, and are organized enough to make yourself healthy meals regularly, you can save money. It may not be the best use of your time, however. Unless you bag a lunch or other meals when you are on campus, the most convenient way to grab a meal is to use the facilities there which are usually on some kind of dining dollar or meal plan equivalent plan. If you want to eat with friends who are dining in a cafeteria where you either have to pay or have a meal card, you are going to be in a bit of a quandry. But, yes, you can do it. When I went to college, I went off campus after freshman year, and basically only ate a meal on campus each day at most, and that was at the a la carte cafetereia, not the meal plan cafeteria. I never set foot in the dorm cafeteria again. I worked part time at one of the food places, so was able to get some of my food for free. A meal plan in that case would have been more of a pain. But having returned to my alma mater, the meal plan situation is much changed with campus cash, dining dollars and all sorts of meal plans. It would be less expensive now to buy some sort of meal plan even if a student lived off campus, unless he is willing to bag and carry lunch regularly. In my day, only the main cafeteria which was in the dormitory area was on a meal plan, which was out of the way from the class room buildings and quads. Also a lot of the local eateries subscribe to the meal plan packages in terms of the dining dollars and campus cash, so it is really worth while to buy something, even if it is a minimal meal package.

Datkid

"And don't DARE say you're going a public kitchen that the whole dorm is supposed to share. That's just nasty and disgusting."

The public kitchen in my dorm wasn't nasty or disgusting. It was usually pretty neat and clean.

MaryTN

Can someone tell me if this idea is true?

When you spend your 529 funds on college tuition, room, board, books etc, you need to keep receipts to show that the money was actually spent on college things. If you are spending 529 funds at the grocery store, you need to keep every receipt... the same goes for restaurants...

Is this accurate??

churning

Most of the times the student does not have a choice as to whether or not they are getting a meal plan: they must get a meal plan if they are living in the dorms. Most of the times it is a waste of money.

HighlandMom

My neighbor's kid went to a local college and lived in the dorm. Kid insisted on weekend meal plan which was an extra $700 per semester. Kid ended up coming home every weekend and not spending weekend meal plan at all.

papengena

I have a son and daughter who will be entering their senior years this fall. The food plans were mandatory for both (at different schools) for freshman year. At that point, we felt it was a good thing, since neither of them had ever had to fend for themselves with meals..so, at least we knew they wouldn't starve. The way my daughters school is set up, it was also fairly convenient for the freshman to get to the dining halls, as opposed to the upperclassmen. At my sons school, they have keep at least a minimum food plan thru their soph yr. This has been such a sensitive subject for my husband, cause from day one he's felt like this whole "mandatory" plan is a rip off, etc. He knows that neither one of the kids is using up the money..and both wind up using their spending money to eat off campus with freinds. Thus wasting alot of money left on the food plan, as well as always needing $$ for "necessities....(we think of that as toiletries, kids think of it as dining out money!)

My daughter went off the plan last year, and we made up our own "food plan". She was in a condo by then with access to a normal kitchen. We easily saved 50% of what we had spent on the food plan, because she doesn't eat that much! We were able to give her the difference for spending money. It was a wash for us in the end, but at least after the school really really making an issue of letting "our" kids be independent, and learning how to fend for themselves..it seemed to us, we were actually helping her learn those skills, as opposed to the school handling how they get thier meals.

That worked for my daughter, however our son is cut from a different cloth! He would never cook something for himself that was healthy. If we did the same thing with him, he would have used up the cash in the first month by going out to great restaraunts, then would have had no money for the rest of the semester! Or he would have had to survive on Ramen noodles!! With him, we chose to get a limited meal plan. So he was able to grab breakfast or lunch, and dinner. (Two meals 5 x's a week) This was the only way I could be sure he actually ate regular food.

Basically, I guess it depends on the kid, the school and your own finances. It does seem to me, that the colleges have a built in money maker by the prices they charge for these meal plans. But the last thing I want them to be worrying about is how they'll manage to eat! We're going to do the same thing this year as we did last, keeping my son on the limited plan..daughter on her own! It works for us

BandW

...on the student, the school location, and the food.

My sons both took the plan with the least number of meals and a fixed number of dollars. One used up all his plan meal and have dollars left to spend at the end of term. The other used up most of his plan dollars but have lots of meals to spare. One of the sons also tried living off campus and found himself skipping meals because he 'fogot'. He was also too lazy to go grocery shopping. So for him a cafeteria meal is better than no meal.

Aside from the earlier comments about paying the wages of those serving the students (and cleaning up after them), the food service is probably paying for all the loss and breakage of accessories as well. Imagine the cost of replacing the number trays broken during traying season if the school is in a northern clime!

From helping one of my sons finish his plan meals at the end of the year, we ate on campus when we helped move. The food was not as bad as the complaints I heard. Healthy meals can be found. However, the variety is not great if one has to eat in the cafeteria day in and day out. It's the monotony and the high salt content that kill the appetite.

Just my 2 cents.

dank08

I'm getting the unlimited plan. I plan on taking large portions of the food back to my room with me also.

compucomp

At Caltech, absolutely not... the meal plan is about $6 for lunch at the cafeteria, while the food truck on campus sells better tasting food for $4. For dinner, the meal plan is about $13, and the food it terrible, while you could eat out with MUCH better food for $10, or cook your own for far less.

It is sad when I can literally eat out every night and still save money over the board plan.

bver100

here's a bit about northwestern's meal plans. You're better off paying out of pocket for your meals rather than getting a meal plan. Unfortunately, all sstudents living on campus are required to have meal plan.

Northwestern News Network | Meal plans: Getting what you pay for (there's a video on the right)
Google Docs - Meal Plans (06-07)

OKgirl

Save money by getting a meal plan? Is that a joke?

The school I'm going to in the fall charges about $5.50 a meal. There are just a few different zones (pizza, chicken, grill, cafeteria food) with the same menu for lunch and dinner (and there is only 1 breakfast zone). It is a complete rip off. Whether you get a meal (chicken strips, fries, drink) or an apple, it costs $5.50.

oatmealia

Why would you say that? There are a lot of variations you can do with those three foods. You definitely cover the food groups.

HiWei

There are definitely two sides to this argument. Are most meal plans overpriced? Yes. At my school freshman year required all freshmen to eat in a dining hall that had an all-you-can-eat style costing $13.50 per meal and if you didn't use it 7 out of 9 (dinners and two brunches on weekends), it would disappear.

After freshman year, however, we were given not a number of meals per week but a number of points per semester with 1 point = 1 dollar. Since both students and the general public paid the same price, except if you used points you don't pay taxes.

So look into your schools program and see which one benefits you the most.