<p>1 to go is a foodie so we are very interested in what the students think of the food options at their school. Do you get much menu variety?</p>
<p>Also does you food plan cover more than just the college cafeteria(s) -- such as local restaurants/delis?</p>
<p>And do you have to purchase a full food plan of 3 meals a day, 7 days a week? When son was undergrad he had to do this freshman year even though he joined a frat and ate all dinners at the frat freshman year.......it seemed an unnecessary expense not to be able to opt out in second semester.</p>
<p>Undergrad at CMU the food was good...for the first semester or so. After that the lack of variety started to get pretty old. They ran on a food-court style system with restaurants scattered all around campus (which I liked). When on the meal plan you bought blocks which were good for pre-determined meals (think stuff like the value menu at McDonalds) and with the DineXtra you could upgrade to other options for the meal, or buy additional snacks/food. The meal plan ran on a two week cycle where your meal blocks and dineX reset. For upperclassmen there were purely dineX plans, but since the campus food was over priced (like pretty much every other school) not many people went with it. There were also independent food trucks on the edge of campus that were pretty good with a meal ranging from $3.50-$5 the time I was there.</p>
<p>Here at Caltech the food is considerably better, though it's not much cheaper. I know the undergrads have a house dinner type of thing where you have to sit down to dinner with everyone else in your house at a very specific time, and the food is pretty good (The personal pizzas they make here are even made in a wood-fired oven!). There's two places I know on campus to get food, and at both of them the food is really good. I'll go there for a quick lunch when I forget to pack something for myself or if I don't feel like walking the 5-10 minutes off campus.</p>
<p>DS says food is ok at his school. He had to get 20 meals/week as a frosh, plan is much more flexible after that. Mealplan card does not work off-campus.</p>
<p>My opinion - his mealplan is very over-priced. $13/meal!</p>
<p>Oh, I should also say, never get enough meals that you'll have to eat breakfast on campus. Generally you won't want to get up early enough to grab a solid meal, and, if you do, it's typically one that can be made for a lot cheaper in your dorm room (Some cereal, fruit, and a cup of juice for $6? No thanks!). If you really want to have breakfast some day, just order in pizza one night or go out for food off campus and use your saved meal block/money to have breakfast.</p>
<p>A few months back there was a news article that rated campus food. Maybe you can google it.</p>
<p>My daughter is at the Claremont Colleges. Her meal plan works at any of the schools. She rates the food at Scripps and CMC as better than Pomona and Pitzer. She didn't mention Harvey Mudd but I know she has eaten there. I didn't pay much attention but she was saying once that Sunday dinner at one of them is awesome. I think they learn which dining hall to eat when.</p>
<p>Their Claremont Cash can be used at a few places in the village. However I think that is different than dining money. Truthfully I didn't listen too hard.</p>
<p>Around here St Olaf is said to have good food. Carleton has changed to the company that caters St Olaf so the food is expected to improve.</p>
<p>
[quote]
My daughter is at the Claremont Colleges. Her meal plan works at any of the schools. She rates the food at Scripps and CMC as better than Pomona and Pitzer. She didn't mention Harvey Mudd but I know she has eaten there. I didn't pay much attention but she was saying once that Sunday dinner at one of them is awesome. I think they learn which dining hall to eat when.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I've been here three years and the general consensus on the ranking is:
1. Pomona
2. Pitzer
3. Scripps
4. CMC
5. Mudd</p>
<p>However, all the dining halls are well above national average.</p>
<p>I went to U of Wisconsin-Madison and the dorm food was pretty rotten. They fortunately had it set up like a grocery deli, pay for what items you want. They had some recurring nightmares like the 18 wheeler (that is actually what they called it, it consisted of 18 fried/flash frozen/refried chicken nuggets shaped like donuts and contained 2300 calories, 100 grams of fat and often human hair). Spanish ravioli that had indistinguishable fillings. Stew type foods that contained discarded leftovers from other dishes. On the plus side, they had a salad bar.</p>
<p>At Virginia Tech we have some of the top food in the country. We usually rank #1 or #2, and it's for good reason. We have the "standard" all you can eat dining hall and it's actually quite good, with pasta, pizza, tacos, burgers, fries, vegetarian, sandwiches, etc. We also have a restaurant quality dining hall (West End) which puts anywhere I've ever been to shame. It isn't all you can eat but the prices are very reasonable, and they've got EXCELLENT food. Most everything I listed before plus another place which has steak, lobster, and other sorts of things. Owens, another dining hall, is also a la carte and is also pretty good, and there is a chick-fil-a and pizza hut on campus on the dining plan. The food is amazing.</p>
<p>The way the plan works is you pay a certain amount of money and you get X amount of money to spend at the dining halls. Theres no restrictions on when/where/how often you can eat. If you run out of money you can add more later. The amount you get is enough to eat dinner every day on campus, and lunch most days. If you ate cheap you could probably eat lunch and dinner every day. The pretty solid majority of people eat breakfast in their dorms. Nobody really feels like getting up early to go eat it in a dining hall, although the all you can eat places on campus both have good breakfast. There are also more dining places opening up in a couple years, because the ones now are getting a tad crowded.</p>
<p>In fewer words, I moved off campus and I still get a meal plan.</p>
<p>food at my school is edible. there's a decent variety. almost something different everyday. it covers the cafeteria on campus, and restaurants and delis on campus as well. it's mandatory in all dorms on campus that don't have a kitchen. they have a wide variety of options. and there is money the school gives you to spend at the delis near by. you can refill when that money is done. otherwise you either get unlimited meals between certain hrs or x amount of means per week. it all depends which plan you get.</p>
<p>We don't have a meal plan, we can choose from about 8 kinds of food a day, and it's between 1,5 and 4$ (we have kind of a debit card system, which works for everything, from bus tickets to copying). The food is good, not amazing, but there's always something vegetaric and something organic, and there are a lot of sides and a salad bar, which are 50c or something..
I do really hate the tomato sauce though.. ;-)</p>
<p>My school doesn't have much variety. We are also unable to use our meals off campus. Our meal plans come with 10, 14, or 20 meals a week. It's about $5 a meal. Oh and the food SUCKS.</p>
<p>At UW Madison, you basically just put money on your student card in your Housing Food Account and you can eat at any of the Dining Halls. You can get whatever you want from any of the Dining Halls, and you don't have to use it, so there is no food plan. Pay as you go, pretty much. And the food is pretty good, I think. There's a big variety, and the locations of the dining halls are pretty good. Some of them have crazy hours though, so that sucks, but otherwise it's fine. I don't find that the prices are *that *bad, either, especially for what you can get. Heck, even the stuff at the mini grocery stores in them isn't terrible. It's more expensive, yeah, but you're paying for the convenience. They have good options for vegetarians, low fat stuff, etc.</p>
<p>The only thing that sucks is that if you don't live in the residence halls, you have to pay 60% more, although that doesn't apply to me right now... :)</p>
<p>Personally, I think food plans are terrible ideas, and I'm *so *glad I don't have one.</p>
<p>Princeton has such a weird conglomeration of dining options that it's a little difficult to say.</p>
<p>For the normal meal plan (freshman and sophomore year, junior and senior as well if you stay in a residential college), the quality depends very much on which dining hall you eat at. A couple are excellent, the rest are mediocre. On this meal plan, you can also get food at the food court at the campus centre, for late lunch and late dinner. This food is excellent.</p>
<p>As a junior/senior, if you're in an eating club you get food there, and it is much better than dining hall food.</p>
<p>The food at UW-Madison is good. The selection is really broad, and the food isn't like it was in high school. However, in all of the dining halls, it seems that it's the same products being offered.
The only "bad" food here is in our student union, there's a cafeteria style restaurant with pre-wrapped burgers in foil, which have likely been sitting out for hours on end, that are always cold. I had one my second day, and threw up about 4 hours later.
We also have a nifty ice cream shop that's not too bad.</p>
<p>^Well, there's Lakeshore and Southeast equivalents, but I don't think they're that similar. I mean, Frank's is so different from the food offered at Carson's, etc., so you don't have to eat the same things everyday if you don't want to. But yeah, I've noticed places like the Ingraham Deli have really bad food that's ridiculously overpriced. Bleh. ;[</p>
<p>I feel the dining halls here at UCF are the best of those I've tried on my college tours, so I'm very happy with it. There are basically two dining halls on campus where you can use your meal plan, and with many plans, you get an allowance to spend each semester at the various restaurants on campus. If you don't use it all, it rolls over to the next semester, which is very nice. In the dining halls though, everything is cooked in front of you, so really most of the stuff you eat is right off the grill/frying pan and not under a heat lamp for half an hour. For example, they have a pasta station where you choose your noodles, veggies, meat, and sauce and they make it for you just like at a cocktail party.</p>
<p>At my school the main place to eat is the student union, there's a little variety but I've already grown tired after just a month in. The quality is better than fast food, and that's all I'll give it.</p>
<p>NYU food is good, but expensive. It depends on the location though-some dining halls are better than others. I kept having leftover meals (60 out of 175 went unused fall semester last year, 40 went unused spring last year) so I cut out the meal plan this year.</p>
<p>I'm pretty picky (semi-foodie) so I like to make my own food only because I know what's in it, and plus, cooking was and is still kind of a hobby for me. I tend to improvise a lot since I'm on a pretty tight budget, but I seem to be able to make good soup now. Going into a tangent, just picked up a bottle of balsamic vinegar for $2.89 and I saut</p>
<p>I go to UCF as well. The Flexbucks are awesome, but the standard meal plan is not so good. It's all right I guess when living in a dorm with not many options, but the food there gets real old, real fast. There are plenty of private food suppliers on campus that provide excellent food, at a price cheaper than UCF Dining does.</p>