<p>Go for the smallest meal plan offered freshman year. I think it’s the silver plan. I have a lot of friends who have ended up with over a hundred extra meal points on this plan. Sophomore year you will have the option of choosing a smaller plan, if you want one. </p>
<p>If you or planning on playing a sport you may want a larger plan. As I mentioned I am on the crew team. Most of the girls on the team are fine with the silver plan even if they don’t have any extra meal points, but the boys regularly run out of meal points. So If you plan on eating extremely large meals you might want a bigger meal plan. </p>
<p>However, in general the silver plan is more than enough. Also if you run out of points you can still buy food with cash or campus card points(money you put on your student ID).</p>
<p>I disagree with aspenleaf in the sense that I don’t think you should get a bigger meal plan, even if you’re an athlete. If you have leftover meal points at the end of the year, you lose them. That’s money that you’ve spent, gone. You should always buy the smallest meal plan and if you use that up, add money to your Bear Bucks. You can remove money from your Bear Bucks account but not your meal plan, so it’s safer to choose a small meal plan and then buy food with Bear Bucks once your meal plan is exhausted.</p>
<p>I think the Silver plan is about $1600 per semester. That may seem like a lot, but for many people it turns out to be way too much. For example, most people leave campus for Thanksgiving. The cost of your meal plan, however, includes Thanksgiving break. So you might be on track to exhaust your meal plan right at the end of the semester and then after the 5-day Thanksgiving break you’ll find that you have an extra $60 to spend.</p>
<p>I’m using the Bronze meal plan right now and it’s noticeably smaller than the Silver plan. That doesn’t apply to freshmen, though.</p>
<p>This is how I see it: Buy the smallest meal plan possible and don’t adjust your eating habits if the money looks like it’s running out. As long as you can exhaust the money in your meal plan (which you CAN’T withdraw) and switch over to Bear Bucks (which you CAN withdraw), you’re not wasting any money. And everyone loves money.</p>
<p>Edit: Sorry for the huge post on such a mundane topic.</p>
<p>I agree that in general you should by the smallest meal plan, I’m just sick of hearing guys who eat four meals a day begging other people to buy them food half way through the semester because they’re out of meal points and don’t want to spend real money. </p>
<p>@Synth if you know everyone on the crew team it shouldn’t be at all hard to figure out who I am. I gave you more then enough information in my first post on this thread alone (hint: it’s the third post on the thread) and I haven’t posted that much, so you can probably find all my old post if you go to my profile.</p>
<p>I agree that the smallest plan available should be purchased, because then you just add what you need to the campus card and no money is lost. I do find it hard to believe that kids have money left over on the silver plan. There is a “suggested amount” that goes down by $13.03 a day. Even taking into account Thanksgiving and other breaks, that is not much food a day. Still, my freshmen son only needed about $100 extra, which is much less than the additional cost of the bigger plan.</p>
<p>I’m on the bronze with about $250 over right now (still better than the end of freshmen year when I had $600 extra! haha). The Bronze plan works out to be $10 a day (plus, they count the points you dont spend of Fall/Thanksgiving break). Time to start the group trips to Ibby’s :P</p>
<p>I read in “Bear It All” that the reason you should always buy the lowest plan is because one dollar does not actually equal one point when you buy the plan. It costs more than a dollar to buy each point. So, if and when the plan runs out, you can purchase your food with actual money or bear bucks, and be sure that you are purchasing your food at a one-to-one ratio.</p>
<p>I thought I saw that the silver and gold plan both had the same dollar amount of “overhead.” In other words, you actually do pay only $1 per point for the number of points the gold plan exceeds the silver plan. But I have not done the math. Any way you look at it, buy the smallest plan available as long as whoever is paying understands (so you parents don’t think you wasted money, for example).</p>
<p>The overhead is the same for all plans now (it wasn’t like that 3 years ago)
That means 1 point on the silver plan might be 1.5 dollars, while 1 point on the gold plan might be 1.3 dollars. In the end, the only thing that matters is how many points you’ll think you’ll have left over. If you think you’ll have any points left over, go for the smallest plan. Otherwise it doesn’t make a difference (but you might as well go for the smallest you can get anyway in the case that you still have extra points).</p>
<p>Stress: That’s been mentioned numerous times in this post.</p>
<p>I never did, but I always had at least 1 suitemate with a tv.
In general, all of the dorms have common rooms with tv’s (that have cable) - thus you can watch most shows there. Other than that, when I lived in the dorms I watched everything online.</p>
<p>As for the ps3, I don’t really play video games, but it’s definitely common.</p>
<p>Its worth bringing for the game console - you probably won’t use the tv to watch tv all that often. But yeah, FIFA is almost continuously on in my suite.</p>
<p>I think most freshman common rooms don’t have TVs.</p>
<p>For my freshman year, I brought my Xbox and plugged it into my computer monitor. I didn’t have a TV, but that’s because I don’t watch much TV. Feel free to bring a TV if you’ll get use out of it.</p>
<p>Hey everyone, congratulations on your acceptances! I’m a sophomore majoring in biochemistry and minoring in music and environmental studies. I’m very involved in undergraduate research, a cappella, and the pathfinder program in environmental sustainability. Let me know if you have any questions!</p>
<p>Was it easy to get involved in research? What type of research do you do? Is it true that sometimes professors, even at the freshman level, sometimes offer their students research opportunities? </p>
<p>Also, I love WashU’s a cappella groups! I went to Discovery Weekend this year and we got to hear about three or four different groups perform. They were all amazing!</p>