How important was / is the quality of the campus food in your college decision making or your own college experience?
We have made it a point to eat at an on-campus dining hall when we toured schools and found that the quality was wildly different.
For residential colleges, it seems especially important for the on-campus dining options to be high quality. I lived off campus for both undergrad and grad schools, so I don’t really have a strong sense of how much on-campus food matters.
At a few schools we toured the food was so good (University of San Diego) or so bad (Cal Poly SLO), that we immediately went to Niche to see if the campus food grade reflected the reality we were experiencing. It did in both cases (A+ for U of San Diego, C- for Cal Poly SLO. - it honestly made me wonder what a school had to do to get a D).
I didn’t have it as a separate factor for my kiddos’ college spreadsheet, but after our Cal Poly experience, I am adding it.
For those of you with kids at schools with especially good or especially bad food, has it made a difference to them?
My kiddo doesn’t do well if he isn’t eating well, so yes, that was one of the factors we looked at.
He has high school classmates that are at a large University where they have several standalone eateries, but the menus at each of them never change, so after a couple months they’re all sick of the food. As a result they’re living on snack foods that they keep in their rooms.
I think food at a school is one of the overall “wellbeing” attributes.
Food was no consideration at all for our son when 4400 cadets sit down at the same time and eat each meal in 20 minutes. West Point makes over 13,000 meals each day. Yum.
Food was a big consideration in the decision process, but it has ended up being a not so big deal. All institutional food feels pretty lackluster after a few months. But after two years, what she appreciates most about college dining is how easy it is - no shopping, cooking, or cleaning up.
As an adult, I worry about campus food when there is chatter about frequent food poisoning from their dining hall, which is something that some of her high school friends at another college have dealt with. College newspapers can be a good source of info if it’s truly a problem. For example - here’s an article from 2 years ago about some food service safety issues at American University: Recent health inspections cause dining dilemmas - The Eagle
I do think that some people make some seriously absurd complaints about college dining - for instance, there was a late night rant from a parent on the college’s facebook group for parents about how her student couldn’t find fresh berries in the dining hall in February.
It was important for both us (parents) and my daughter. I personally think that UC Merced was the best choice for our daughter, but she would not even give it an honest go due to the lack of prestige and social life.
I bring this up because I will never understand how a school located in Merced would not consciously design and plan for their dining halls to provide the best food in the UC system in order to attract students.
It was a factor for our family as our kid is an athlete and has to maintain a semblance of healthy eating. Fortunately, the kid’s accepted choice has what I consider to be solid options for eating. Flexible plan (purchased each semester, can add more but not take off meal swipes).
And, there is a Trader Joe’s and Sprouts near enough to campus. So relieved.
When I went to college, there weren’t really options. It was all campus food, choice of dining halls, but no food courts or options.
First 2 kids had schools they really wanted to go to and when they were accepted, that wasn’t really a consideration. Child 3 wasn’t tied to one school, so they definitely considered food courts and options as a big thing. School child chose had Moe’s, Steak and Shake, Chipotle, Chick Fil A and Panda on campus, which was important. Unlike older children who went Greek after freshman year, child 3 will continue to have meal plan and then the added surcharge for the swipes above what the meal plan covers. In our case it’s about 250 a month, so if your kid only wants to eat at food court and not the dining halls that’s something to consider
The food at S22’s college gets very low Niche grades, but he says it is fine. He is glad to be living in apartment style dorms his sophomore year and cooking for himself (except for a very small number of swipes we bought him to fall back on during crunch times) but that is more about enjoying the independence than anything to do with the school’s food.
Food was not a factor but became one. Oldest escaped food problems (remote Covid year) and no mandatory meal plan after that. (We got her a deep freezer and loaded it with Costco and Trader Joe’s food she loved every fall at move in. Then she got the rest in local stores. )
Youngest has non-stop disaster with food at residential college to the level that yesterday chaplain paid out of her budget for all Jewish kids for dinner at a restaurant near campus! College on Passover had for dinner at both available food courts pork as a main course with bread…
If Bon Appétit is a food service provider than it is a disaster…
ADHD/potentially autism results in subclinical ARFID presentation for me, so while i haven’t had the chance to eat at all the dining halls of the schools i am considering, i am looking at the menus and taking the proportion of days “safe foods” are available into consideration
My daughter actually liked the options Cal Poly offered, we tried an option in each of the two dining hall areas and tried one of the food trucks. I’ve also heard they are adding a traditional all you can eat style dining hall next year. I could see where a boy might want that for volume of food, but we had Indian, a Mediterranean bowl, and a breakfast bowl and they were all good. There are also some very good restaurants in SLO!
Good food would have been an icing on the cake but was not really a factor. Most people stay in dorms for 1 year and then after that they are likely better off learning adulthood by budgeting/cooking/meal planning.
The fact that the food was not great may have inspired my son to move off campus and learn to cook. I love that he could take control and become more independent. That said, campuses known for good food include James Madison U, U Mass- Amherst and VA Tech.
Campus food is so much fancier than when I went to college in the Stone Age. My D goes to Elon, which offers sushi, stir fries, a juice bar, vegetarian options and delicious cookies. We had a salad bar and that was about it.
In college I used to stock up on fried chicken patties because they were tolerable and I could take as many as I wanted.
Anyway, today, if it was me, I’d be looking for dorms where there was a convenient full kitchen. But I now know how to shop and cook. When I first went to college, not so much.
We’ve got our S24 trained up on a solid basic cooking list with one or two fancy (but not hard) things as well, but I can understand why at least initially he does not want to have to worry about shopping and cooking. Maybe on the back end though.
Not a consideration here. Both of our kids had food that seemed varied and actually good. We did want to know where food points could be used off campus. Both of our kids attended college in urban places, and there were a LOT of off campus options nearby where they could use their dining points.
Our kids also had microfidges in their rooms, and a good supply of snacks.