<p>I was looking through the meal plans and was mainly interested in the Golden Bear - $2,782 per semester for unlimited access.</p>
<p>I'm not living in a house and i thought about going to restaurants but figured in $100/day in food = more than $3,000/semester.</p>
<p>I'm also curious to know what the "unlimited access" and timing means.</p>
<p>$100 /day in food? have you ever paid for food? gone grocery shopping? eaten out? Unless you're eating every meal at a nice restaurant, that's absurd.</p>
<p>If you're living in an apartment you can just cook for yourself / make your own lunch and probably will do so at least occasionally. I have never met a person who's needed a Golden Bear plan.</p>
<p>I've also never met anyone with a Golden Bear. Not even the freshmen living in the dorms who have mommies worrying that they won't eat enough vegetables.</p>
<p>I would recommend getting the Collegetown Plan, which gives you $750 BRBs and 10 meals (for $50, a good deal) a semester. If you buy it both semesters, you only have to pay the $50 dining fee once, and so you get 20 meals for essentially $150. You can use your BRBs for all food on campus, including a la carte places and dining halls, which would be cheaper because there is no tax for BRBs AND the price of a meal is different whether you pay by BRBs or cash. And if $750 isn't enough for you, which it is, you can always add more money to the BRB account.</p>
<p>But living in collegetown, you can cook, eat in the little restaurants in collegetown, on campus, or go down to the Commons for a nice meal.</p>
<p>i agree with grommet here, 100 bucks a day is a little absurd. if you can find your way to walmart or wegmans or tops once or twice a month, i'm betting you can get enough food to eat at your own place for 300-400 per month on the upper end of things. that means 10-13 bucks a day when you buy groceries. 100 bucks a day is insane- you must be used to either getting a gourmet meal 3-4 times a day, you are a bodybuilder with a highly specialized diet, or you are severely overweight.</p>
<p>10-15$ a meal is avg for ithaca</p>
<p>dont forget to take advantage of subway and lunch specials at the chinese place...</p>
<p>Also, what other people have forgotten to say is that the meal plan only applies to All you can eat dining facilities, none of which are in collegetown.</p>
<p>There are three all you can eat on North, and several with the house system on West campus, and (the only? i think) on central is Okenshields on Ho Plaza.</p>
<p>So unless you want to trek to west campus or north campus for your meals, you won't even be using meal plan meals.</p>
<p>I called up and was told the Collegetown Debit Plan - $825 per semester would be the best choice.</p>
<p>I just dont understand the 10 meal thing. What do they mean by 1 meal? lunch? dinner?</p>
<p>1 meal is a swipe into a dining hall, and could be for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Though, it would be more cost effective to use that for dinner, which is the most expensive meal.</p>
<p>yeah that 10 meals per semester thing is for when you're uber hungry or you have a friend you want to join on campus...</p>
<p>bump for more responses</p>
<p>People are downplaying the convenience of the dining halls. For me personally, I loved going to dining hall and having the meals prepared for me. I didn't have time to spend a half hour - hour preparing or thinking of what meal I was going to make. Maybe CollegeTown restaurants (the fast-foody type) will provide similair convenience though. I doubt they'll proivde the same amount of food b/c dinig halls are all you can eat.</p>
<p>If you plan on getting a meal plan, go for 10 meals/week. Also the points are great for nightly snacks or meals outsdie the dining hall (I used my poitns primarily at the West Campus convenicne store, Ivy Room, and misclleneious places).</p>
<p>But living in Collegetown, you own't have ready access to dining halls/Cornell owned stores as if you lived on West.</p>