How do meal plans work?

College Life
1

<p>I’d like to know how do meal plans work?</p>

<p>Thanks,
~ Andy</p>

2

<p>It depends on the specific college. At mine, for example, some plans are for unlimited continuous dining: you can go into the dining hall as many times as you want during operational hours. Other plans give you X amount of meals per month. And some other colleges have a dining dollars plan, where a certain amount is deducted based on what you decide to eat.</p>

3

<p>This will depend on what college you want to go to. So when you’re doing your college research find the dining page on the school’s website, and you’ll probably be able to find all you want to know about the school’s dining halls and meal plans.</p>

4

<p>They’re scams designed to stop mathemaphobic students from realizing they’re paying $10 per meal. Buy food at the grocery store instead and you’ll save a TON of money.</p>

5

<p>^
or people do them cuz they’re much, MUCH easier than shopping/preparing food for yourself…</p>

6

<p>At my school, I spent less money in the dining halls than I do now, living in an apartment and having to grocery shop for myself.</p>

7

<p>

</p>

<p>Lol, this too. In my college town having your own place off-campus and cooking your own food is half the cost of living in dorms and eating crappy dining hall food. If you’re forced to have an unlimited plan it’s a different story, but if you don’t then save yourself some money and buy things like cereal and even bread and peanut butter at the store. You’d be surprised how much you could save. It costs like $5 worth of meal plans to eat breakfast in our dining hall. For $5 I could buy cereal and milk that would last a week or two.</p>

8

<p>

</p>

<p>Or you could go to a school like mine where there is literally no where to cook food if you live in the dorms, therefore you live on crap food without a meal plan. </p>

<p>Depends on your university.</p>

9

<p>

</p>

<p>How do you spend more than 10 dollars a meal when you get food from grocery shopping? You can easily spend half as much by just eating frozen dinners!</p>

10

<p>At my school, you’re forced to buy a meal plan if you’re living in the dorms, and the meals get cheaper the more you buy… it’s ridiculous.</p>

11

<p>

</p>

<p>It wasn’t 10 dollars a meal at my school. You just put money on a card, and the food was ridiculously cheap, probably around 3 dollars a meal.</p>

12

<p>It depends. One of the schools I visited gave you a certain number of points, and depending on what you got to eat, you spent more points. My school uses a meal “swipe” system. Each time you go into the commons, you have your ID card swiped, and it counts it on your record, and you can eat as much as you want while you’re in the commons. You can choose from three meal plans that each give you different numbers of swipes. We also get a certain number of “FlexDine” dollars (the amount depends on your meal plan) that you can use at any of the restaurants on campus by just swiping your ID.</p>

<p>But each school is different.</p>

13

<p>or go to a uni with such great food that you don’t mind the meal plan (Virginia Tech)</p>

<p>or a uni with a really cheap meal plan</p>

<p>UMD’s system is okay. We have the dining points or whatever, so a “value meal” (big entree with sides) is like $7.00 or 7 dining points. It’s best to just think of them as dollars. We kinda get shafted though, I don’t think our meal plan supports eating three square meals a day from the cafeteria. Then there are various other plans mainly aimed at off-campus students and commuters. I have one and it’s served me well since it also works at our student union’s food court.</p>