<p>19 cub (aka “regular”) is not flexible. You can only swipe once (i.e. enter dining hall once, order one item off a cafe menu) per meal period (breakfast, lunch, dinner). There are some exceptions such as on Sundays at De Neve Late Nite (worry about the exceptions later).</p>
<p>19P gives you GREAT flexibility. You can enter the dining hall as often as you like when it’s open, as well as swipe in as many guests as you can afford. You can also order as many times per meal period as you like at a quick service cafe (e.g. order 5 smoothies or 3 sandwiches from BruinCafe at once). The meals for 19P will be put onto your BruinCard at the beginning of each quarter, and they deduct throughout the quarter. So you have maybe something like 200 meals in September, and it’s up to you how you want to use them by the end of the quarter by December. Repeat for Winter and Spring Quarters.</p>
<p>The regular meal plan gives you 19 meals at the beginning of the week (Monday), and you can only use it once per meal period (note some exceptions). Once Monday morning comes, however many swipes you had left for the previous week will vanish and you will start the new week with 19. If you don’t use 19 in one week, they’re gone. Wasted. That’s it. Premier gives you all your swipes at the beginning of the quarter and remain until the end of the quarter. New quarter, new batch of swipes.</p>
<p>Premier = MEGA flexible.
Regular = use it or lose it.</p>
<p>There aren’t really any restaurants other than the dorm restaurants near the dorms. It’d be hard to quickly get a meal for breakfast if it isn’t in the dorms and you live in the dorms. You can go on campus and pay for breakfast with cash at any of the rather numerous eateries around. You cannot pay to get into the dining halls directly with cash. You either need to purchase a meal ticket from the Front Desk with cash, or deposit cash into your BruinCard and use the debit feature of your BruinCard to get into the dining hall.</p>
<p>You can keep milk and cereal in the dorms as you please. You can get a microwave or a microfridge (there are some restrictions about what you can “legally” have in your dorm).</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s any one “typical” type of student. They do all sorts of things on the weekends and evenings. You can eat off campus or not, if you want to save your meal plan or not.</p>
<p>You might want 19P as an out-of-state student. But if you plan on going out to eat a lot, maybe 14P would suffice.</p>
<p>If you want to change your meal plan sometime during the quarter, you can but it will cost a fee.</p>