I have a HS senior applying to Lafayette. It is a top 3 favorite at the moment.
In another college parent group, someone was seriously complaining about the food situation right now. Under-cooked meat/chicken, kids getting food poisoning, her kid finding foreign objects in their food, and so on.
If you have a current student at Laf, is this parent exaggerating or is this on point with what your child is experiencing now as well?
No direct experience but Niche ranks the food at Lafayette a C- and in our experience those food grades are usually generous.
I also remember reading about a possible norovirus outbreak last year: Health center unable to rule out norovirus as illness hits campus – The Lafayette
Oh yikes! Thank you
Did you see this instagram?
In general, food is important. Some don’t think so but if you get low blood sugar, kids can’t function - ask me how I know. You might want to talk to kids on a visit or even contact the food staff with concerns - or yes, maybe it shouldn’t be top 3.
Mine loved American - but they had similar issues (raw meat) and it sort of turned her enthusiasm down several notches.
Good luck
I’ve had students at 6 universities, food ratings from A- to B. I’ve seen the pink chicken/food poisoning on every parent page (99% of the time is a stomach bug, not confirmed food poisoning). Even the A- parents complain about lack of options, hours (many seem to expect dining halls to have restaurant hours being open morning to night). Students insist they need $1000 a month for DoorDash. I lived in a dorm for 4 years, 1 dining hall, 2 choices every night for dinner. Ate lots of ice cream and cereal, it really wasn’t a big deal, we had ramen and welfare cheese (one friend’s dad worked for the government).
I think food is very important to some kids (celiac, medical needs, religious diet, etc.) and not that important to others. So I don’t think a one size fits all approach works.
Find out from your kid how important the whole dining/choices/quality/convenience matrix is going to be.
I agree it depends on the student, I have 2 with celiac. One was diagnosed at 7, the other 27, and both are pretty chill about finding food, maybe because one was so early, the other so late.
My D graduated from Laf but it was a while back. Food was fine (not great) – probably typical college fare. It is quite possible the quality/provider have changed since she left. As I remember my D took a smaller meal plan after freshman year. I’d suggest you visit if possible and eat in the dining hall yourself.
ETA: 1) I should mention that my D had a wonderful 4 years at Laf in every respect – academics, socially, ECs, research, etc. And she had a great outcome with an acceptance to an Ivy (amongst others) for grad school. 2) From a quick google search it looks like big food problems were in 2023 when they transitioned to a new food service. Hopefully things have improved since then – it is a question you can ask during a visit.
I agree that parent Facebook pages at many schools are filled with complaints about the “raw chicken-food poisoning-foreign object.” It certainly was a neverending parent complaint at my kid’s school (not Lafayette.) Parents were up in arms about how much they paid in tuition and then being forced to pay another $1000/mo on restaurants/Door Dash because the food was “inedible.”
My kid said the food was fine. Yes, cafeteria food, but much better than his high school cafeteria and at least as good as what he was served at home (lol) and more variety. I ate in the cafeteria a few times, and I agreed.
The reports of “food poisoning” are almost never food poisoning. It’s almost always norovirus or a similar stomach bug going around. Even when the parents claim that their kid went to urgent care last night and “it was food poisoning”, it never turns out to be. The only way to tell if something is food poisoning is to do very specific stool cultures and other tests, and these tests take a number of days to come back, so there is no way they got that diagnosis last night at UC. And the “uncooked chicken” is almost always just some pinkish-red discoloration of the meat from the chicken bones.
So I would say rest easy, unless gourmet quality food is important to your kid.(My kid appreciates gourmet food, but he also knew I wasn’t paying for anything more than the meal plan, and so it would have been his own money.)