Meal plans for on-campus students

Colleges and Universities A-Z Texas A&M University
1

<p>Which one is better for a freshman on campus? the Howdy one says 7 meals per week, but does that mean that I can only eat once a day? Thanks</p>

2

<p>No. I believe you can eat more than one meal a day…you can just only have 7 in any given week. I think I’m waffling between the Fish plan and the Gig 'Em plan. There’s some conflicting information on the webpage. On the Dining Plan page it says that meal plans CANNOT roll over from one semester to the next. On the FAQ page it says they CAN…just not from academic year to academic year.</p>

<p>So if they CANNOT roll over, then if you don’t use your dining dollars, you lose them. So it doesn’t really pay to overbuy by a large margin. However, it might actually turn out to be more economical to buy a larger plan and leave a little money on the table than to buy a lesser plan and have to purchase MORE dining dollars to make up the difference because as the plans get larger, the cost per meal goes down.</p>

<p>You can figure about 16 weeks in a semester, so 112 days max (probably less, because you’ll have holidays and maybe some weekends where you’ll go home). If you eat 2 meals a day, that’s 224 meals…so that kind of helps to gauge.</p>

3

<p>I’ve heard with this new plan that</p>

<p>1 meal = All you can eat at Sbisa or 3 submeals throughout the day at places like Chic-Fil-A. </p>

<p>Dining dollars also don’t roll over at all now.</p>

<p>This new plan system really, really sucks.</p>

4

<p>I agree that the plan could be better. I don’t like the fact that nothing rolls over.</p>

<p>But I don’t understand the one meal to three meals that you’re talking about.</p>

<p>What I read is this:
•Meals can be used as one entry to the all-you-care-to-eat locations, Sbisa and Duncan Dining Centers.
•Meals can also be used as a Meal Trade in the food courts.
•You may use up to three Meal Trades per day, one per Meal Trade Zone (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late night). </p>

<p>So you can use 3 meal trades per day. But a meal is a meal. So if you have the 7 meals per week, you could choose to eat 3 meals on Monday in the food court, and that would leave you four meals for the week. The next day you could eat 2 meals at Sbisa, and you’d have 2 left for the week. </p>

<p>One meal = one meal…but you can only exchange 3 per day for food court stuff. Of course you can always use your dining dollars.</p>

5

<p>I’m not sure, but I heard it from here:
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<p>which makes more sense to me than only having 7 meals a week. Mm…but yeah the way that’s worded does make it sound like we only get 7 meals a week…</p>

6

<p>After running some numbers, I think I’m going to go with the Gig 'Em plan for the fall semester and see how it goes. I think if she bought the Fish Plan, I would have to supplement by buying extra dining dollars, and in the end it would end up costing slightly more than the Gig 'Em plan.</p>

7

<p>Izelkay, I think the Howdy plan is meant for someone who plans on eating off campus a lot. It’s a minimum plan. Like maybe someone who goes home every weekend and eats off campus once a day.</p>

8

<p>you are right cromette, I think that too</p>