Meal Plan Costs

<p>At George Washington, freshmen are required to get $1700 a semester in "Colonial Cash" - some of which must be used in certain dining areas, but the rest can be used at local restaurants, grocery stores, bookstore, laundry, etc. Each year, the required dining amount declines. D is the type who always took a sandwich to high school, and I can see her having a bowl of cereal in her room for breakfast and a sandwich or yogurt and fruit for lunch. They don't have the traditional full meal cafeteria on the main campus, it is more food court places, which would concern me if she was not the type of kid who is used to making healthy choices.</p>

<p>Yearly cost- $3088
Plan- 12 meals/wk (390 total) + $280 Cuisine Cash
Price per all you can eat meal- $7.20 + $280 Cuisine cash.</p>

<p>There is also an option to lock in a 2-year price for $80 more a year.</p>

<p>Whoa. D's meal plan is $2325 per semester, with three options: either 19 meals a week/or two versions that combine points and dollars that would possibly cover about two meals a day.
Some of the plans I see on this thread sound pretty good in comparison.</p>

<p>My S's meal plan is unlimited meals for $3815/year. He is a freshman. He has never been a breakfast eater, and I hope that changes and he takes advantage of all of the food.</p>

<p>D's meal plan is $1885/semester, which includes 14 meals per week, $225 in meal money that can be used in on-campus markets & at area restaurants, as well as $3.10 rollover for missed meals. This is expensive, but it is so much better than what she had at her previous school - the cost there was comparable, but the meal choices were nowhere near as good. This year, she is able to purchase very healthy food in markets with meal points. Instead of mealy apples & green bananas as her only fruit choices, she can get pears, kiwis, and other great options. She can get packaged salads & wraps that rival what she could get in a fancy market. She can choose bottled water or 100% exotic juice blends. She is just so pleased with the healthy choices she has this year, and it will be a great bonus for her health.</p>

<p>Sure beats the AWFUL food I had in my college dorm. The healthiest option was salad-in-a-bowl ... the kind with iceberg lettuce, processed meat & cheese strips, and fatty dressing choices. The canned vegetables were cooked to mush & the only fruit choices were canned fruit cocktail or canned peaches. </p>

<p>Because I have tried to teach my kids to eat properly, I appreciate the opportunity for them to do so while away at school.</p>

<p>Funny, I was just "doing the math" yesterday as I paid $2245 for my son's 10 meals per week plan. Minus $190 dining dollars leaves $2055 for at most 160 meals, or $12.84 per meal... except he will get far fewer meals. The plan started Sept 1, and he left for school today!</p>

<p>DD's school plan is $1600/semester - no choice. You chose in the beginning how many meals per week. The "leftover" money is in "dining dollars" which can be used for additional meals, in the campus center food court or some other places on campus. You can purchase extra dining dollars. The meals do not carry over week-to-week. But the dollars from fall carry over to spring then expire.</p>

<p>So the $12 - $14 dollars I'm paying per meal is indeed overpriced, from what I'm hearing from most of you.</p>

<p>4trees, your son is right. I actually work in the Food Service Office of our public schools, and I know that the actual cost of buying the food is only about 1/2 of our expenses. The rest is salaries & benefits for staff, equipment purchase and repair, paper goods, etc. And we don't have to pay rent, either! BUT.... we manage to cover all these costs for $3/meal (or less at the younger grades). I am sure the food at S's school is much better than what we're serving, and he has much more variety, and they just renovated one of the dining halls and it looks gorgeous.... but $13/meal is a profitable operation, no doubt about it.</p>

<p>
[quote]
1. Cost of the food, yes, but factoring in kitchen cost plus shopping, storage, prep, cooking, clean-up, waste and time makes it's a different deal.
2. Someone has to pay for the dining hall building, kitchen facilities staff, plates, forks, knives, water and sewer costs, the guy who hauls the garbage, the person who washes the windows, the folks who made the paint on the walls, etc.

[/quote]

This is all true. However, my D could eat at the name-brand on-campus fast food places for less money than the dining plan and they offer the services you describe. How healthy that would be versus the dining halls is debatable.</p>

<p>I have no doubt it's a profitable operation. However, they're advertising that they pay $9.65/hr to work at the eateries. They also offer this for non-resident students who work there - While on the job, enjoy an all-you-care-to-eat meal for just $1.75</p>

<p>My DD is at an all you can eat cafeteria plan. So cost can be expensive or if you eat like a football player, $5.00 or less per meal. What is trouble is that she cant grab a banana or a bagel to bring back to her room to eat later at night. All food must be consumed on premises. The sushi bar uses only flex dollars so i see having to add more flex dollars to her card.</p>

<p>$2210.00 per semester. $750 of that is flex dollars to pay for breakfast, lunch, snacks. The rest is for 5 dinners a week. So $1460 for 80 dinners = $18.25 a dinner. And my daughter eats dinner maybe twice a week.</p>

<p>Both sons are living on campus in two different colleges.</p>

<p>One is $3,400 a semester for board for large two bedroom apartment with full kitchen and 4 people living in it. We give him about $200 a month for food. This is a private university in California</p>

<p>Other son is in a 3 bedroom on campus apartment with 3 residents, they all have a private room, there are 2 baths, and a full kitchen. $575 a month includes all utilities, TV, Laundry, and Internet. We also give him $200 a month for food. This is a public university in Oregon</p>

<p>drizzit, you are very lucky with the public school. I was just looking at a state college here (MD) with on campus privately run apts. Both are 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1 person per bedroom. One complex is $952 a month per person plus utilities, cable tv, and internet. The other apt complex - $3850 per person per semester including utilites, etc</p>

<p>I am bumping this up as I am trying to anticipate what my sophomore son will eat over a semester :). Freshmen were required to purchase the All Access plan and according to his friends, “if you want to find S, look in the caf”. </p>

<p>They offer a dining dollar plan for about $1300/sem or block meals for $2156/175 meals plus $125 DD, or $1312/100 meals etc. </p>

<p>It’s like trying to pick a cell phone plan. He will be in a suite style dorm but I don’t want him to have to cook as there are no grocery stores near etc. he can probably swing breakfast if they get access to a car periodically. </p>

<p>In the prehistoric days, we could only eat in the caf so block meals make sense. But maybe DD work if he ends up eating at other campus locations? </p>

<p>Any advice or comments on things I might be overlooking? </p>

<p>My sons preferred the "dining dollars’ because of the flexibility they afforded. They could be used anywhere on campus and often at local restaurants as well. My sons often used Amazon Prime to get nonperishables and other necessities when shopping was difficult–and they would sometimes bring a thermos bottle to the dining hall to bring back milk to their dorm room refrigerator. They would also make liberal use of the "make yourself a lunch " station if they happened to go to the dining hall for breakfast–make a couple of thick sandwiches and take several pieces of fruit and cookies, etc.</p>

<p>Sad but true… most schools are $10-$15K per year for room/board/fees. We did the math long ago, as part of college planning/research.</p>

<p>Often students are able to move off campus and get 12 months apartment about same cost as dorms (or less). . The big savings comes from getting off the meal plan. In our case, DS is required to live on campus and do that meal plan. That’s rare, but we knew the scoop going in. </p>

<p>Like so many things - “it depends”. Carnegie Mellon’s food was pretty lousy so mathson dropped to commuter meal plan (his dorm was far enough away to do this). When he moved off campus dropped meals all together. He’s a super-picky eater and never eats anything but Life cereal for breakfast. Tufts regularly is on the list of best campus cafeterias, though like any institutional food you can get tired of it eventually. S2 stayed on full meal plan the whole time. He’s a three meal a day guy.</p>

<p>My school does unlimited meals (3 dining halls close at 10 pm M-Th, the others close at 715 and during weekends) with $500 dining dollars for about $2,800 a semester and 35 flex passes. All the meal plans are unlimited, with only the dining dollars and flex passes varying. </p>

<p>I’m living on an apartment on campus but far away from all 8 dining halls so I bought a community meal plan last year that carries over each semester. 25 meals for $250. </p>

<p>DS told us his meal plan is expensive but the quality is not that great. But all students living in that dorm have to purchase the meal plan. So many money savvy students decide to move off-campus.</p>

<p>The college knows how much the location of their dorm is worth. So they bundle the room and board together and they do not allow the students to choose one but not the other.</p>

<p>I saved a ton of money on boy 1 and 2 because they were both great cooks, ate naturally healthy AND could scoot home for lunch during the day. They shopped well and it all worked out. #3 is apt to eat not great food, although he, too, can cook and his university is huge and he couldn’t manage to get home to eat in the middle of the day so i got him a meal plan that should cover one meal per day for one semester and yes I was shocked to see that it amounted to about $8.00 a meal. I really don’t expect him to hike to campus on Saturdays and Sundays for the full day, so perhaps he won’t eat $900 worth of food in 3.5 months plus the grocery cost since breakfast and dinner are on him, and I’m giving him half the food allowance i gave the two older boys since I bought the meal plan. But basically food at colleges cost triple what one would spend at a grocery store. It is shocking. </p>