So my daughter will be going to Trinity University in San Antonio and we are really excited. But we are looking at meal plans and not really sure which one we should go with. I am hoping parents that have kids with College experience can help me.
The plans are pretty straight foreword but as I don’t want my first child to be sent away to starve. So my question would be is the Flex 240 enough or do I need to go with the unlimited. My daughter doesn’t really eat a big breakfast so I don’t know that she would need an Unlimited plan. But really advise from parents who have had to make this choice is very welcome.
Does your college schedule classes around mealtimes?
If your D’s classes overlap with a mealtime, the unlimited option will definitely not be worth it*. Might be a good thing to check each semester after finalizing course selections.
Had a few semesters where a class/lab overlapped with lunch and some classmates' classes overlapped with dinner hours.
Congrats! I can’t speak for that school in particular, but in general unless your D is a huge eater the Flex plan should be fine. She will go out for meals now and then, there are sometimes free meals as part of an activity, many kids sleep through some breakfasts when they have early classes and keep some quick foods to grab such as granola bars in their room etc… And also check the fine print because many colleges do allow students to change (or at least upgrade) plans within the first week or two of school in the unlikely event that she finds the flex plan is not sufficient.
Thanks guys. They do require them to buy a meal plan and they can change it up to the add/drop deadline. They do not require the flex 200 or up for a freshman. I thin the 240 should be plenty I just wanted to make sure from other’s experience Thanks for the advice.
My guess is your daughter would be fine with the 240 and not the unlimited. If she were some big, beefy football player, I might feel otherwise, but both my kids (different colleges) male and female utilized plans that were more minimal and were just fine. There will always be some meals taken off campus or takeout shared with friends, sleeping through breakfast, etc. Plus, I’ve found that there are always events on campus which incorporate free food (if you want to get college kids to show up for something, offer them free food!) so many reasons during a semester to skip a meal here and there.
Also, since it’s only for a semester, you can always go another route going forward. Plus, you have a savings of $300 to apply towards additional food costs before you hit the price of the unlimited plan.
I don’t think it is how much they eat as how often. At D’s school, she had a plan for 12 meals a week as that was the lowest allowed. She didn’t even need that many. She could eat as much as she wanted while she was in the dining hall, and she could stay as long as she wanted, but if she left and returned, it was another swipe, another meal.
One of the best pieces of advice I got was regarding meal plans. Most schools will allow you to buy additional meals if you run short. It is better to buy a cheaper plan and add to it if needed. Each year kids at sons school give away lots of meals at the end of the semester because they have way more than they can use. I find this applies to girls more than boys. The upper classman look forward at the end of each semester because they know freshman are going to swipe them.
When S1 was a freshman, he was required to take the unlimited plan. He took a 14- meal plan his sophomore year. When he moved off-campus we got him a commuter meal plan to supplement his budding cooking skills. By his last year all we had to do was help with groceries.
I’m guessing 240 a semester is roughly 15 meals a week. Plus there are “dining dollars” or whatever they call them. That should be plenty. My daughter had to buy the unlimited plan (it was required of freshmen at her school), but she could easily have gotten by with 15 meals a week (or less - 12 would have been more than adequate). She didn’t eat breakfast in the dining hall, and the dining halls at her school were only open for two meals a day on the weekends. There are frequently opportunities for free food on college campuses, which would save meal swipes, and a lot of kids prefer to eat off campus on weekends. Kids also get tired of dining hall food and will eat elsewhere from time to time. Better that you save the money you would have spent on the unlimited plan and have it available for times when she’ll want to eat off campus with friends.
Your kiddo won’t starve, regardless. There are plenty of places to buy a meal around campus if the meal plan runs short. Keeping a box of protien bars at the dorm and a couple in the bottom of the book bag is always smart.
There are always carry out places around schools, some that even cater to healthy eating habits. Sometimes it’s easier to eat with cash when you’re on the go and can’t spare the time to make a trip to a dining hall. Often, it’s cheaper…depending on the appetite of your kid.
Not that it’s comparable necessarily, but we sort of regretted getting the unlimited plan at UF. Our son is 6’5" and a big eater and I’m still not sure we got our money’s worth. He ended up using all of his flex bucks each semester going to non-meal plan places. He burned out of the dining hall food pretty quickly.
The one nice thing is that he could run in and out of the dining hall for an ice cream or a soda and not worry about it.
My D’s college would make up a meal for you to pick up and take if you were not going to be around. She would order one for the days that she was working all day off campus.
Good luck. I am a smart person but could never quite figure out the meal plans, especially those extra anytime meals and the meal points, meal dollars, ugh. I’m going on my 6th year of having a kid in college and I just give up!!! So far they have not starved.
I don’t understand how this works at your school but I got DS 15 meal/week plus $500 flex dollars at his school. I lived on campus all 4 years and had the same plan as an RA. I figured breakfast and dinner with friends in the cafeteria, pick up lunch near the classrooms. I don’t think his building will have kitchen facilities.
Neither of my kids wanted or needed an unlimited meal plan. Both wanted the smallest plan allowed because they wanted to be able to prepare simple meals, sleep thru breakfast, eat off campus, etc. those kids who bought unlimited plans were very popular at the end of the term, when they were frantically trying to use up all their meal $$$–buying stuff and treating folks to meals. As soon as they could, they stopped having any meal plan and just switched to preparing their own meals.
We toured the campus in April. Beautiful place and very welcoming. The way it’s organized is interesting - classes,etc on the upper part; dorms, dining hall, gym below. I wonder if kids would be more likely to have lunch on the upper campus, not go down to the main dining hall? In that case, it might make more sense to have more “bonus bucks”. Just curious - do you know the difference between “bonus bucks” and “board meal points”?