<p>The blocks are worth $5 apiece, and you use them to buy items priced individually. The prices are inflated in the sense that they are more than a grocery store would charge, but they are about as expensive as a cheap restaurant. For example, you can get an individual pizza for $6, a burger for $4 to $6 depending on the dining hall, a drink for around $1.50, a yogurt for around $1, french fries or soup for around $2, a granola bar for $.75, etc. You might use two blocks for a major meal–an entree like a burger, sandwich, pizza, or pasta plus a side and drink, and maybe one block for a smaller meal. If you only spend a little over $5, you can use one block and then have the total less $5 deducted from the cash on your BuckID, which functions like a debit card. I believe it is two blocks (so $10) for lunch or dinner at the buffet-style “commons” dining halls, and one block for breakfast. </p>
<p>I haven’t used blocks myself, but my younger brother was on the meal plan this year and treated me to a few meals. He was on the 450 plan and was able to eat three meals a day without having many leftover by the end of the semester.</p>
<p>I was on the 350 plan, and I had a lot left over… I rarely used more than 3 blocks a day, until the end of the semester when I just stocked up on stuff from the c-store so they wouldnt go to waste. I would recommend the 350 plan. I had the traditional plan, but you couldn’t really eat anywhere else, and the food gets a little boring. It is nice to have options. The 350 plan isn’t much more expensive than traditional, plus it comes with $150 in buckid cash… I’m going to switch to the 20 block per week plan this fall though, as I really don’t eat that much, and I believe it is a little cheaper.</p>
<p>My son started with the 450 plan, and had over one hundred blocks left over. Luckily, the University offered a one time only buy back of unused blocks @ $3.00 per block. I believe this was done due to the change this past year to semesters. </p>
<p>Obviously in the next semester we switched over to the 350 block plan and it was near perfect. One thing to remember, quite often you will likely eat at off campus places that don’t take blocks. At least my son and all his friends did. Unless you eat three full meals each day plus snacks, and do so almost exclusively on campus, I can’t imagine needing more than the 350 plan. You also have a few weeks, if I remember correctly, to change plans once the semester starts, so you can monitor your first few weeks gauge usage.</p>
<p>I had the 350 block plan last semester and ended up with quite a few left over. I guess between eating off campus and being conservative because I thought i’d burn through them too quickly screwed me. I ended up buying a lot of water and cases of juice at the end of the semester to use them up… I still ended up losing like 50 blocks.</p>