Meal plans and dining... for a commuter.

shootehJoon
Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:01:17 +0000

I’m a freshman commuter from Long Island, so it’s about an hour train ride everyday and an hour and a half commute door to door, and from my experiences, I wouldn’t reacommend getting a meal plan.
A meal plan is A LOT of money, and the way that they factor meals is a main dish, a side meal, and a drink. To save up on costs, you could always bring water with you, bring a bag of chips (which would be the side anyway), get something from a vending machine, and then go to a dining hall for actual food. For every dining hall, you can also get a main dish or whatever you want and pay for it with cash, which isn’t too much anyway. I’ve done that at both Upstein and Weinstein. There are also a lot of people willing to swipe a meal for you (especially now that it’s the end of the semester and everybody has meals left over, I don’t think I’ve paid for food in the past two weeks). Kimmel center, where as a commuter you will probably get very well acquainted with, has great food and the price isn’t that bad (3.50 for soup, 7 dollars for huge 1 lb salad, 6.50 for stir fry).
So in terms of a meal plan, avoid it, you will save much more money buying food from different places, and bringing water and snacks from home.
I’m on campus every day of the week, and I’ve never really had any problem with food.

I also wouldn’t recommend getting declining dollars. Declining dollars and campus cash are there for people who are on campus all the time and only have places on campus to eat. I think they’re both useless options for anyone, it’s easier to pay with your own credit card/cash, but it’s honestly a good way to make sure that your parents are paying for those expenses.
If say you’re in Penn station and want to get coffee from there, it wouldn’t apply. If you’re home on the weekend, it wouln’t apply (haha ,obviously).
So yeah, that’s my two cents.