Often parents decided to start with unlimited plan the first semester, then adjust as needed 2nd semester. If a student will eat most meals, it makes sense. If they never eat breakfast and will skip a lot of other meals it might not be worth it. But… first semester a lot of freshman bonding happens at mealtime… so it may be worth it.
Unless the majority of one’s college students are morning folks, it’s much more likely that form of bonding takes place at lunch/dinner than at breakfast…which most freshman IME tend to skip/sleep through if they can.
At my daughter’s school, you could upgrade a meal plan during the year, but you could not downgrade one. If you chose the unlimited plan for first semester, you had to have the unlimited plan for second semester, too. Other schools allow downgrades, and all schools have different policies, but you’ll want to make sure you can downgrade a mealplan during the school year before you choose a larger plan with the thought that you can change if it’s too much.
At my D’s school, they have switched the basic plan to an unlimited meal plan when she started her freshmen year there. There are upgrades available to add more dollars for eating outside of the dinning hall. With the basic unlimited meal plan, it comes with 2 guest meals and 10 order to go meals. The unlimited meal plan actually works very well. My D may just get in to pick up a banana if she did not have time to eat and return later for an afternoon snack. The order to go meals are also great that she can place the order online and pick it up at certain time. After sophomore year, she moved out of the dorm and does not have that meal plan anymore.
Why does that plan offer 200, 240 etc without saying how many meals per week that is, or how many days there are in the semester/year? That would be my first calculation.