<p>I just visited WUSTL, the campus looks perfect, the buildings look very nice outside and inside. But it seems to me the University is very conservative and somehow I get the feeling that the majority of students body are rich kids, maybe I am wrong. After all the acitivities, I ate at the university center, the food did taste good and was very expensive. Is this the way students eat? are there any meal plans? how does meal plan work? </p>
<p>Please answer. Thank you.</p>
<p>meal plans:
[url=<a href=“http://diningservices.wustl.edu/mealplans_student.asp]Washington”>http://diningservices.wustl.edu/mealplans_student.asp]Washington</a> University in St. Louis - Dining Services / Bon App</p>
<p>As with most colleges, the campus is actually pretty left-leaning. But there is representation of pretty much every single political viewpoint.</p>
<p>I also have never understood the claim that the food is expensive. The meal plans are a huge rip off ($1.30 per point), however.
If you’re living off campus, you can get the lowest meal plan (800 points?), and still buy all of your food on campus… for dirt cheap. If you pay with campus card, it’s tax free too.
The most expensive my meals ever are is $4-$6 dollars (I don’t eat sushi…). Considering I usually pay less than that, that’s actually really cheap. The only way to really pay less than that for a meal would be to cook it yourself.</p>
<p>To the op: the meal plans work on a point system, not a meal system.</p>
<p>Students in private schools are generally better off than those in public schools. Especially for the top 15 schools when things such as SAT prep courses can help a lot. By no means is everyone rich though, and most as previously said are middle class and receive some form of financial assistance. I would say Wash U is more conservative than many other private high-ranked schools, but even so it is still slightly to the left. </p>
<p>The meal plan is expensive for students staying on campus. You pay over $1000 in “feees” that support Dining Services, and then get X points which correspond to X dollars. A typical meal from the university center is 6 points, plus more for a drink, snacks, etc. That said, I’m pretty confident that it’s no different to most other private schools. Food costs are certainly one of the biggest complaints students have.</p>
<p>I think conservative/liberal will depend on your friends group. As others have said, the campus really is more towards the left, on the whole. I don’t think that there exists a “ideology spectrum” of rating colleges when it comes to colleges. How can anyone know that, anyway? You go to one college, how can one possibly compare Wash U to Harvard to Vanderbilt, when it comes to that? I don’t get it. At the last election, when we hosted the VP Debates, there was a definitely a minority of Sarah Palin supporter signs and a preponderance of Biden/Obama supporter signs. Now, I do know that Democrat doesn’t always = Liberal and Republican doesn’t always = Conservative, but if you took a straw poll of Wash U students the scales would almost certainly tip heavily in favor for Liberal. </p>
<p>St Louis as a city is very liberal, as is Kansas City at the other end of the state. The REST of Missouri is definitely very much a Red state. I think the dichotomy between having two major consistently liberal cities surrounded by a big rural population makes Missouri a really interesting and diverse place from an idealogical point of view. In the past 100 years, Missouri has picked the President for every election except two (Eisenhower, and Obama). No one should ever want to be in a place where everyone thinks like himself/herself, and Missouri is about as far from a predictable Red or Blue state as you can get. </p>
<p>Anyway, you’ll find both groups on campus, and there’s a great bi-partisan political review magazine called the Wash U Political Review. Because we have groups like that, the college dems, the college republicans, prominent speakers coming to campus, and hosting a Presidential Debate basically every 4 years, Wash U actually has a high amount of political discourse on campus.</p>
<p>“A typical meal from the university center is 6 points, plus more for a drink, snacks, etc. That said, I’m pretty confident that it’s no different to most other private schools. Food costs are certainly one of the biggest complaints students have”</p>
<p>I took a look the website about meal plan, Square Meal Deal 3,008 points $4,296, which is about $1.42=1 point. If your meal is 6 points plus 1 point for a drink, 7 points are about $10 dollars. The quality and the quantity of the food at the university center is not that good. My first post meant the food did not taste good and was expensive. I visited a couple of other top private schools, all their foods were better than WU’s in terms of quality and quantity. Just recently visited University of Chicago, their meal plan is not cheap, but the quality is much better, with the plan you can go any dining hall and eat as much as you want.</p>
<p>Doctor- you really think the food isn’t good?</p>
<p>I absolutely love the food at washu.</p>
<p>I ate the food at nearly a dozen schools in the past year while looking for a college for my son. Wash U. easily had the best food. (and nicest dorms).</p>
<p>hm yeah i’d have to agree that the food here beats any place I visited as a prefrosh. it is pretty expensive though, but there are on-campus options (e.g. Subway) that are priced really reasonably.</p>
<p>Wash U is consistently ranked among the top colleges in terms of quality of food. It is however expensive. The way I learned to deal with it (it’s really cheesy but…) is to consider 1 point to be 1 dollar, and the rest of the fee as part of the tuition – since it essentially is. I felt crappy buying food until I did this, as I was essentially spending $2.50+ on a single bagel that costs less than $1, or $3 on a normal bottle of juice.</p>