<p>What is the best meal plan to have?</p>
<p>The Unlimited Access plan (not the plus version, I'll explain that in a minute). The plan is somewhat misleading in that it is called unlimited access. It only gives you unlimited access to the cafeterias, most of the better food (Chick-fil-a, Pizza Hut) uses something called meal equivalence. This meal equivalence is split into three periods of the day. You'll want to write this down, it's possibly the most useful piece of information and I could never find it my freshmen year.</p>
<p>7-10:30 is breakfast
10:30-4:30 is lunch
4:30-closing is dinner.</p>
<p>During each of those periods you get a certain amount, between 4-5 bucks, to use at the better restaurants. This is where it gets interesting, regardless of how much you spend you can only use the meal equivalence once during each period, and whatever you don't use in your amount is basically wasted. If you go over the amount, or if you just want to buy something real cheap and not waste your meal equivalence, you use something called Bonus Bucks/Dinning Dollars/etc (Disclaimer: I'm a junior now and the name has changed every year, so it may have changed again this year). Furthermore, once you use your meal equivalence for that period then you have to use bonus bucks or some other form of payment for the cafeteria food if you want it. As you probably guessed once the next meal equivalence period rolls around the process starts anew.</p>
<p>Now to why to get the regular plan instead of the plus plan. The difference in the plus plan and the regular plan is the bonus bucks, you get 100 bonus bucks with the regular and 300 with the plus. Thus, they increased the price of the plus plan to be 200 dollars more, however since you can add more bonus bucks at any time I suggest you just add more as you need them since you don't get any kind of credit/cash for unused bonus bucks at the end of the semester; they are just wasted if you don't use them. I went home on the weekends, so I'm not sure but I don't believe any plan covers meals on the weekend. All the other plans will lock you into eating in one spot or don't have enough meals a week. I think joining one of the residence hall associations gets you a meal on Sunday, I think you are on your own for Saturday though.</p>
<p>I hope that helps you.</p>