<p>I'm serious -- I look at my son (HS Class of 2014) and he's always hungry... </p>
<p>What do your boys do for food once the dining hall shuts down? Order pizza? Keep food in their rooms? Are there any schools where there's food options late at night? This might be more important than financial aid :)</p>
<p>Many campuses have late-night or even all-night food options. College kids have been known to order a pizza or two. And all the college kids I know keep some emergency supplies in their dorm rooms–waters, power bars, cup-o-noodles, . . . Your son will not starve. Now start worrying about the financial aid!</p>
<p>That was my boy!!</p>
<p>He solved his problem: Princeton has EATING clubs!!!</p>
<p>Seriously, he thought it was the answer to his always hungry problem…a school with eating clubs, a match made in heaven!!</p>
<p>Not to matter the difficulty in getting admitted…an EATING club! or that the clubs are social and dining options for upperclassman not an EC…soooooooooooooo the boy ended up at:</p>
<p>Princeton, in an eating club, even further a senior officer in an eating club allowed to reside within the club, granted access to all the eating clubs as an executive officer, who ended up eating ALL the time. </p>
<p>Seriously.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>Hi Classof2015! Some schools offer a fourth meal in the dining hall each night. It’s something you can ask about when you visit. I know that Vanderbilt and BU have this. Schools in urban locations will have more late night eating options. My D’s dorm at BU has a Subway, mexican place and convenience store on the first floor.</p>
<p>Another thing to look at is whether you can use your meal plan to buy food in a late-night convenience store.</p>
<p>DS’ dining hall is all-you-can-eat plus you can get a to-go box and cram it as full as you can get it. (you pay 25 cents for the to-go box). So, he will frequently go eat lunch and then get a to-go box and take it back to the room.</p>
<p>Just sent my son a case of mac-and-cheese from Amazon. Of course, he’s in an apartment-type dorm and can boil water.</p>
<p>Seriously, even if the school offers late-night food options, they are likely not all-you-can-eat dining hall meals. So carefully evaluate the meal plan options available to be sure that meal-equivalents can be used or that the plan has plenty of “points” available for alternative venues.</p>
<p>Check how late the dining halls are open in the evening, too.</p>
<p>Thanks all – Hi momjr – good to <em>see</em> you again! I’ll definitely ask those questions when we tour. Good tip Hunt about using food dollars at other stores.</p>
<p>My DD college has a meal plan that is unlimited meals throughout the day, that option is only $100 more per semester, about $1686. The other meal plans are for up to 4 meals per day and that is around $1550. Then they have other places where you can use your flex dollars as they call it, a pizza place for instance and it is open until midnight. She attends Slippery Rock University in Western Pennsylvania. Even for us oos the overall cost is excellent. It is $21500 a year, which is the upgraded dorms in the LLC. If you do the more traditional dorms it drops to about 18500 per year.</p>
<p>One more tip, applicable at any college–tell your hungry kid to get up and eat breakfast. I told my son I’d pay for a fourth meal, but not a fifth meal.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my son’s top choice for college is the one that greeted us when we arrived for a visit with tickets to lunch in the dining hall, where the food was excellent and all-you-can-eat. He was immediately sold. I’m convinced that whatever school he attends next year, if it’s meal plan is unlimited food, will be taking a loss on his room and board, but my grocery bill will be reduced by more than half!</p>
<p>Many of the schools we visited require freshmen to have a full meal plan, and food availability did not seem to be a problem. Perhaps a mini-fridge in the dorm room would fill in any gaps, if he has access to a nearby market.</p>
<p>Most campuses have some kind of late night dining option. I know most of the schools we have looked at have flex dollars built into their plans where they can eat at the dining hall for 3 meals and have some school dollars to use at various cafe/hamburger type places around campus. We also loaded DS up on food for his dorm room. His school had kitchens on each floor so he could whip up some food if needed. I know he kept some spaghetti sauce and noodles handy most of the year. He likes soup so we stocked him up on that as well. He was the first grandchild on both sides to go off to college so he got a LOT of care packages from grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc.</p>
<p>My S’s school (RPI) has late night dining from 10:30 PM -11:30 PM, Monday - Thursday.</p>
<p>Pizza, chicken wings, ravioli, chicken tenders, Belgian waffles, french toast sticks, etc.</p>
<p>Not every school offers an unlimited meal plan option, so it’s worth investigating.</p>
<p>However, one thing I hadn’t thought about until a presentation we attended at an admitted students day was that where unlimited dining is just an “option,” the student who has it may find that his friends want to eat off-campus more than he does, because they DON’T have unlimited meal plans. </p>
<p>Some schools have everyone on unlimited meal plans, which means that the dining halls are the default option for meals. </p>
<p>Most schools seem to have some late-night dining or convenience store options on campus, but schools in a more urban environment also have access to the surrounding neighborhood so it’s not a problem to get a snack.</p>
<p>Northwestern has on-campus dining options open until 2am. </p>
<p>There are places in the area that deliver as late as 4am, and Burger King is open 24 hours.</p>
<p>During the day, you can access dining halls at any time if you have one of the unlimited plans. Off campus, you will not run out of places to eat in Evanston/Chicago. Most of these places are within a few blocks of campus: [Evanston</a> Restaurants and fine dining including BBQ, French, Italian, Indian, Middle Eastern, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, burgers, fast food, breakfast restaurants and pizza.](<a href=“http://evanstonrestaurants.net/]Evanston”>http://evanstonrestaurants.net/)</p>
<p>Everyone at my son’s school has an unlimited meal plan all four years. They can also get a bagged lunch to go. Dining hall is open from 7am-9pm. There are also two pub types places on campus and one stays open until 1-2am. They do have to pay to eat there. There are also kitchens on every dorm floor and most kids also have a mini frig in their rooms.</p>
<p>I haven’t heard of anyone starving.</p>
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<p>…Combine that with the $$$ saved on the water bill, and room & board may just be a bargain ;)</p>
<p>Hamburger University?</p>
<p>[Hamburger</a> University - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger_University]Hamburger”>Hamburger University - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Ha! I have nothing to add, but can definitely relate. DS is not allowed to eat in class at his high school, and he seriously wanted to ask his doctor for a special letter that would allow him to snack in class. I kept track of his calories last spring, and he was averaging 7,000-8,000/day on a 5’10 150lb frame. </p>
<p>He does have Bowdoin and Wash U on his list right now mainly due to their rave dorm food reviews, but we haven’t looked at the meal plans yet as he is a Junior. </p>
<p>Thanks for bringing this up, as we will look more closely at the actual meal plans as he puts together his college list.</p>