Now we are committed to Macalester. They are sending some random email updates: one of them was they are doing renovation on the campus cafe. Hopefully it means better food! (we had their food during a visit and it wasn’t bad (not great)).
Otherwise, my DS24 grew up with campus food from 3 flagships and his expectation is low. Certainly, this wasn’t a part of his college decision making.
Tell Macalester to set up a sister program with the Culinary Institute of America.
Niche gives the CIA an A+ for food.
Based on my and many others the Niche food ratings seem to be quite accurate.
There are 39 schools who got an A+ in food. CIA is #34.
Cutoff from A+ to A is Jessup University.
Grade inflation run amok.
Looking at a map of Mac’s environs, there appear to be a bunch of dining options on Grand Ave (northern end of campus) and St. Clair Ave (southern).
Exactly. If Macalester was somewhere middle of nowhere, it might be different.
We are just hoping that Fordham has improved the quality of the food because people complains a lot about it, but apparently at the LC is better than at RH.
Well, for the purposes of making decisions, I think the difference between schools in the A+ or A category and schools in the C - category is meaningful. Whether it’s number 3 or number 34 is irrelevant.
a little bit concerned by the schools i’m still considering’s ratings. anyone who’s been to these schools able to weigh in? i did okay at kenyon (B-) and sewanee (C+) and while i would have ranked them a little higher myself probably, i’m still pretty concerned.
A+: washu, wesleyan
A: tufts, vanderbilt
A-: none
B+: vassar
B: harvard (??? that’s a little concerning), mt holyoke
B-: northwestern, wellesley
C+: upenn (???) - reddit is saying there are health code violations, people found maggots a few years back, etc. not sure how much is exaggerated, but that’s pretty concerning.
C: smith - redditors don’t seem to have many concerns, but given that upenn is ranked higher, that scares me a little.
I would consider where you’re likely to be eating at each school. If you plan to be living on campus and eating in dining halls for most of your time as a student, I would think harder about dining hall food quality. If you plan to live off campus for most of your college years and cook for yourself or eat at cafes and restaurants, ratings like these may not be as relevant for you.
As I noted above, WashU has a crazy number and variety of places to get food on campus, and different students seem to have their own select lists of favorites.
I liked the basic idea of the main dining hall at Vassar (Gordon Commons)–it has a whole bunch of different stations with their own rotating menus. In terms of actual quality, B+ sounds fair to me. Supposedly lines can get long some times, but there are also some smaller cafes.
we never ate directly at the dining halls during the scholars weekend, but i did get something from the boba place in the library and liked it a lot!
Yes, as I understand your concerns, WUSTL certainly seems like one of the high end choices, because I think you could pretty quickly identify a list of things you liked, and then you could them get as often as you liked. I note they are changing one of their main vendors–actually from Bon Appetit, which Vassar also uses, to Sodexo. I am sure it will be a priority for them to maintain as high a standard as possible, since this is a big part of their competitive branding, and they also use a lot of local vendors for various locations (including I believe the one you referenced). But it will be interesting to see how the transition goes.
Speaking of which, for a place like Vassar (which obviously is much smaller and so cannot use the same exact approach), I wonder if it makes sense to check out their menus. Here is Gordon and you can link to the others from there as well:
You can look at the menus on different days, or download a printable menu for the whole week, like this:
https://legacy.cafebonappetit.com/weekly-menu/474842
I note they have a Brick Oven station with cheese pizza every day, but then other things rotate. I had a black bean burger that was decent (I’d call it a flat B), and that is the sort of thing also available every day at The Grill. And so on.
To me a big difference is buffet vs. food court style.
At the buffet you can choose what ever combination of items you want on one swipe. Maybe its a huge pile of cantalope, a tiny smattering of scrambled eggs and a side of pasta salad. i.e. whatever you want that day.
(e.g. U San Diego, St. Olaf, Lawrence)
At the mall food court style you pay (or swipe) for every item. So if you want pasta and salad, they are each completely separate full orders from two different stations, each of which is a separate payment. Cal Poly was that way and it was truly garbage food. We didn’t even finish what we bought.
After that experience, I have a big red flag on any of the schools on our list that have C or lower food grades.
Well, if it’s buffet style where everyone has access to the food, then that’s a big no for me. I don’t want the masses touching any of my food.
Too many germs floating out there today. And I don’t like eating at a trough with the other “animals.”
Penn food reviews are exaggerated by a lot. Some of the “violations” were faked photos a couple of yrs ago. Mine likes the food there. They have chef nights and other things, and there are many options in the main food areas. Pret a Manger inside a main campus building/on points, and Starbucks some other on -campus place helps too.
Don’t know if this is still true, but when I was at Vassar, we had students from CIA interning in the dining hall! Score!
Depending on your standards, Penn’s food can be considered fine or terrible. In our house we eat clean—limited processed food, lots of fresh fruit and veggies, and lean meats—so the dining hall food was a shock to my kiddos’ systems. D19 rarely ate at the dining hall. S23 did his due diligence to determine which dining halls have the best food and he frequents those and the cafes. The food trucks surrounding campus are a good option too.
I’ve eaten at Harvard and Penn (do not attend either school but have spent multiple weekends at both). Harvard food is fine, nothing special but I didn’t have any problems with it. Penn food is quite terrible: the health code violations are true (see Students criticize Penn Dining after allegedly finding cockroach, glass, maggot in food | The Daily Pennsylvanian and Two Penn dining halls found not in compliance with Philadelphia health code | The Daily Pennsylvanian), food is not very tasty, and many of my friends, despite being mandated to be on the meal plan, still go and cook their own food anyway because they can’t deal with the dining halls.
My kiddo didn’t consider food, didn’t even see inside the dining hall of Hamilton. Lost 10 pounds her first (and only) semester and she was thin to begin with. It was quite awful according to her. She is transferring to St. Olaf and we ate in the dining hall on our tour and it was really good!
