<p>I have some visits coming up with my son (HS junior). I’ve read about it being useful to eat a meal in one of the campus dining halls and it sounds like a good idea for sampling both food and vibe. My question - how does it work? Can anyone go into a college dining hall and pay for a meal? I would think you would need an ID for the school. Do you arrange it through admissions?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>The question will differ campus by campus, so there is no one answer.</p>
<p>You can always pay with cash without an ID. I go to Cornell and we always have families bring their kids to eat with them. Sometimes it is a bit more expensive (I think at JHU it was $12+?), but it was well worth it to get an idea of what the food is like. I would also recommend going in a bit earlier since some dining halls open at 5pm at some colleges and there are no lines and the tables are only filled to like 10%.</p>
<p>Dining halls love outside business. St. Olaf, a college in Minnesota, has senior citizen couples come in after church on Sunday morning all the time and I’ve ate in the dining halls at WUSTL, JHU, and CMU as well. The person at the cash register and other students are completely used to having families come in.</p>
<p>*Admissions may pay for your kid to have a free meal. Ask if they offer a meal voucher to visiting families wanting to eat at the dining hall. They usually have them at least for shadowing students, so it may be worth the call.</p>
<p>NOTE: Under the extremely unusual circumstance that you can’t pay to eat in the dining hall, try to find an on campus caf</p>
<p>When we checked in with admissions before an information session/tour we would ask about eating in the dining hall. Sometimes a school will give you a voucher to eat in the cafeteria for free, but if they don’t ask if cash is accepted (we never had an problem paying cash).</p>
<p>We often ate in the dining halls at schools we visited and it can be helpful way to not so much sample the food but as a place look around and see if students seem happy and engaged. The food isn’t hugely important --we ate at a bunch of cafeterias with my S and had to laugh when he ended up at a school that was later listed as having the worst food in the country — -but it was absolutely the best college for him in every respect which is much more important. When we visited my D’s top choice of college, she saw a nice approachable looking person eating alone, asked to join her, and ended up getting a lot of insight into the school (and is a student there now).</p>
<p>Unlike the comment about Cornell, the dining hall at Brown is a major social hour and everyone goes. For goodness sake dont’ go early when no one is there!</p>
<p>One thing I wished I had done differently at Chicago was to let dd sit alone with students. When we found room at a table with some I should have let her sit and moved on so she could talk to them herself. I could have just sat alone or with another group. We were there for a prospective student day and I don’t remember paying or having a voucher so sorry can’t help there.</p>