Yep. The pay by meal price was listed as $12 for breakfast and $18 for lunch/dinner.
I think I just mentally lumped “room and board” together and estimated it at double the price of (in-state) tuition, so I never really thought about it.
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My daughter was/is also an athlete, ate lean and clean food, and was often on campus for meals (though her off campus housing was very close - closer than some dorms). But if she was at practice until 7 pm, she wasn’t going to go home and cook a full meal. Easier to go to the dining hall or make something fast at home like a sandwich (but it would be a fancy sandwich). There were also team meals on campus and sometimes the coach would make those on scholarship use their swipes to pay for those. Daughter didn’t care as she always had a lot of unused funds on hers.
The on campus grocery store cost more than going to a grocery store like Kroger or Publix, but since it was already included in her scholarship, she just paid the extra. She also didn’t have a car (but had use of a few) so took the easier route of just getting the food on campus. At one point I was sending an Amazon box to her with toiletries and snacks about once a month but she told me to stop because she had so much available to her through the meal plan/store. The only thing she couldn’t get at the store was ‘pre-wrap’, a spongy wrap they all used (sometimes as a hair wrap) and I sent her a case that lasted the whole team for a year.
One of my huge frustations with meal plans - is this varies a TON. My 6’4 athlete son is going to eat way way more. This is a kid who can easily eat 5 full meals a day - especially when his sport is in season. I would take him to noodles after practice and he’d eat 2 full pasta meals. So while $1,500 per semester sounds crazy to you - I’m sending him $500 a month to cook his own meals.
My daughter was hosting all her friends at the end of the semester as she had money to spare, so I get it - but it really varies! You need to figure out your own kids requirements
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$1500 is cheap!
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So wouldn’t it be a bargain to have him get a school meal plan?
At my daughter’s school there was a M-F lunch only meal plan and it was $900/sem. Her boyfriend (an athlete) had this when he lived in an apartment. “Lunch” was from 10:30 to 3 pm and he often ate 2 (or even 3!) times during this period, a late breakfast, and then go for lunch. And like you said, he could really eat! If he got to the dining hall right before 3, he could stay through dinner.
And his mother was a good Italian mother who would send him ‘spaghetti and gravy’, packed in dry ice, several time a semester!
Seems like your hungry athlete would get a better deal than most students out of an all you can eat meal plan.
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Actually not - we had the whole issue of how much a swipe was - he lost like 10 lbs his freshman year on the “unlimited” meal plan
Im definitely giving way to much
I gave both kids full room and board costs when they lived off campus. They ended up having a small meal plan at school because they usually had lunch on campus.
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My son is probably moving off campus next semester. Rent will be about the same as room, so will pay it as a wash. Currently, we pay for meal plan and anything outside of that is his own money/responsibility. I calculated that his meal plan cost averages out to about $7 a meal if he eats every meal available. If he were to stay on campus we would continue to pay that. Eating at home should be less expensive than that, and we are thinking we will probably give him the equivalent of $4-5 a meal for food each month he’s at school. We save money compared to the meal plan, and he should be able to eat for less than that, especially if he and roomies work together to make meals.
My son goes to school in Oregon, does most of his own shopping and cooking and spends somewhere between $400-$500 a month on food. That said, he’s a very active 6’3" and a bit of a foodie. His dining hall last year sold food by the item rather than by the swipe. We maxed out his food plan and he still lost about 10 lbs living in the dorms. I’m resigned to the fact that he’s just an expensive guy to feed and I’d rather have him buying proteins and fresh produce than not. So much depends on the kid. I have no doubt that D25 will be much cheaper.
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My oldest is a junior. He is currently in Europe (studying abroad) but his rent next year is 1K/month (12 month contract) and we give him $600/month for food. He likes to cook elaborate things but he is also a very active 6’7" 220lb guy and he eats A TON so I think it’d be high for many kids but it’s reasonable for him. I feel like our grocery bill goes up 1000/month when he is home from college.
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