<p>I was wondering how Brown students felt about on-campus dining and Brown’s dorms. I will be a freshman this fall.</p>
<p>Thanks for any info!</p>
<p>WillCan, I like your name ^-^</p>
<p>My daughter graduated in May. She lived on campus for two years and felt that the dorms were somewhat old and dilapidated. The school is aware of this, though, and is currently in the process of renovating, rebuilding, and building new housing. The food was good, according to her, but not everyone agreed. She stayed on an abbreviated meal plan for her third year even though she lived off campus because she didn’t want to have to deal with shopping and cooking.</p>
<p>Agree with franglish. My daughter, a picky/light eater, doesn’t like many of the food options. However, she has mentioned that the food in the Blue Room is good, especially the muffins and baked goods. There are also many good take out and eat in restaurants close by, so it’s easy to find an alternative to the food at Brown. Providence has a large number of excellent restaurants, and it’s not unusual for students to head to Federal Hill or another area for an occasional weekend dinner.</p>
<p>Yup, I agree with the two posters above.
- I don’t particularly enjoy the food - not because there isn’t enough variety, but because it gets boring after a while. Having visited a few other campuses, I feel Brown is neither worse, nor better - probably just has more variety.
As gourmetmom also pointed out, the only place I actually like is the blue room…</p>
<p>Brown posts the menus daily. The fare is different at the 2 main dining halls so you can choose to go to one or the other depending, and the meal plan has lots of options, allowing you to use “credits” instead for meals at the snack bars. Lots of choices, voted one of the better vegetarian option schools, most freshman gain weight despite all the walking!</p>
<p>Dorms badly need cosmetic overhalls of the rooms and halls, but the rooms on average are bigger than many/most schools. As a freshman you won’t have any choice of room. Sophomores will now be getting prime location dorms. (and instead of sophomores getting the raw deal, at least for a year or 2 the juniors are likely to have the worst deal.) Brown is finally doing something about the dorm situation, but it will take a few years to get better. Still is better than the overcrowding of some other schools, esp state ones I know of. My student as a senior, is likely to have to move off campus (not by choice) as lost the nice room they have this year due to housing shuffle and bad lottery number for a single.</p>
<p>Though can you get permission to go off-campus even after entering your name in the lottery?</p>
<p>Barring extenuating circumstances like overcrowding (which is rare), no. Off-campus permission and applications are usually taken care of in the fall of the preceding academic year, whilst housing lottery numbers are taken care of in the spring.</p>
<p>to the parents of current students, I assure you they’ll miss the ratty and jo’s once they’ve graduated.</p>
<p>^^ That’s exactly what my daughter felt when she graduated!</p>
<p>The meal plan is the largest waste of money ever…i am a freshman right now and plan on going off of it next year. The food is average – I personally don’t have a problem with it but I am not that picky of an eater. The dorms are fine in my opinion, some are better than others…but its a place to live.</p>
<p>I think the dorms seem quite average with the exception of some very large rooms (singles, doubles and triples) sprinkled around here and there. </p>
<p>My son thinks the food at the Ratty is not great, but he likes Jos. He would have gone off meal plan mid-year if he could have, but definitely will next year.</p>
<p>My daughter went off the food plan but soon she missed the social aspect of the Ratty, where she could always meet up with people, so she returned to the off-campus or partial plan whatever it is called. She never said much about the food either way, but she’s from SF so grew up eating really good food so I doubt it was great for her, but she didn’t make a fuss over it. I know she enjoyed going out to Thayer ST, Wickenden and Wayland Square nearby too is especially interesting. The only time she went to Federal Hill was when she was when I visited. It is close-ish but not that straightforward to get to.</p>
<p>Dorms seem to be a very mixed bag and after first year it is helpful if you get a good lottery number. There are some hidden gems if you look for them. My daughter got a dorm for 4 with a free living room in grad dorm sophmore year that she liked quite a bit.</p>