<ol>
<li><p>I don't plan on living in a dorm that requires a meal plan, but should I buy one anyway? I plan on cooking for myself, but I'm not sure how long that will last for or how often I will want to/be able to? Does anyone have positive/negative experiences with the meal plans that they'd care to share?</p></li>
<li><p>Admits just got finaid awards today, and for estimated expenses (like books, supplies, groceries, laundry, transportation, entertainment, etc.) $2,772. Is that about how much you spend a year on these things? </p></li>
<li><p>A more specific version of the previous question. How much did you spend on food if you did not have a meal plan?</p></li>
<li><p>Was easy to find a job and maintain suitable hours while dealing with classes and urops etc?</p></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><p>I would recommend not buying one at first. I know SO many parents whose kids ended up eating like at most a couple meals a week from the dining hall and signed up for the plan. Once you commit, you can’t cancel until the next semester. You can always pay out of pocket and add the plan at any point. It’s not a huge savings discount (like you pay $8 for what would cost you $10 in cash). My son enjoyed the meal plan at first (he’s in a dorm where it’s required and really loves the dorm), but even by Christmas was bored with it. He’ll stay there and pay since he doesn’t have a choice but it’s definitely not gourmet cuisine.</p></li>
<li><p>I have no idea on the overall amount but have 2 bits of advice. First if you have a 529, they can charge Techcash right to their student account so you can have that paid directly from the 529 and then use Techcash for almost everything - laundry, meals, books, toiletries. Also, while first semester most students bought books through the bookstore and paid full price, by second semester they were all trading books or selling them for around $20 to one another so it won’t be list prices if they make any effort.</p></li>
<li><p>Can’t answer as my son really eats all of his meals in the dining hall. With a late breakfast and early dinner (and all-you-can-eat), he rarely buys food on campus other than a pizza or Subway if it sounds good and just eats poptarts/ramen/etc. in his room at other times.</p></li>
<li><p>From my son I don’t know of anyone he knows with a job. Sure it’s possible though. He’s in ROTC which is about a 15-20 hour a week committment between PT, classes, labs and required activities and has been fine. I’ll be interested to know what you find out though because son #2 may be there next year and since he doesn’t have ROTC paying his tuition, I’d really like him to look for one - whether through UROP’s or TA-ing or a normal job. </p></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><p>It depends on the dorm. If you’re going to live at Random, no. We’re closer to the grocery store than to any dining hall, and the grocery store has a lot more options for pre-prepared food. We’re also within five minutes walking of a gazillion restaurants. I don’t know about EC or Senior House, or whatever other nondining dorms there are.</p></li>
<li><p>I have friends who live off of about $50 a week for food. I probably spend around $100, but I eat a lot of hipster cereal and drink a lot of hipster organic milk, and when I buy frozen pizza, it’s also usually organic.</p></li>
<li><p>You’re guaranteed at least a semester of paid UROP. 40 hrs/week in the summer UROPing pays $4.5 thousand (about half goes to housing). During the semester I have three jobs: admissions blogger, deskworker, and notetaker for disability services. The last two are fairly easy to come by and don’t take much time or effort. Especially deskworker. You’re paid $9.something/hr for sitting on the first floor and letting people in if you know them.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Marciemi- thanks for the reply, I think I am leaning more towards not getting a dining plan now. And your son is in the class of 2016? Congrats!</p>
<p>Lidusha- yeah I am currently between random, Macgregor and ec but that’s only from what I’ve read and seen online. Also, any advice for an aspiring blogger?!</p>
<p>Current hybrid senior / first-year grad student, course 6-3.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No. The meal plan is ridiculously expensive (~$15/meal). If you order delivery food every day for lunch and dinner, you /may/ come close to how much the meal plan costs, but for ~everyone I know, it would be a huge waste of money.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Are you sure that’s a yearly, not a semesterly, estimate? In any case, I don’t actually really have an estimate about how much I spend on “normal” things - I like to go to concerts and travel and such, so my spending habits aren’t really normal. When I was a freshman, I didn’t go out very often and spent very little money. You can definitely spend more or less, depending on how tight your finances are.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I spend about $50 on groceries a week. When I was a freshman, I was spending more like $20/week (I ate a lot of pasta).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>First off, UROPs can be a job - you can get paid for them.</p>
<p>I’ll make up for marciemi’s son’s friends, this is a list of the jobs that I held:</p>
<p>freshman spring: SAT tutor, UROP, East Campus deskworker
sophomore fall: SAT tutor, East Campus deskworker
sophomore spring: SAT tutor, East Campus deskworker, 6.01 LA
junior fall: East Campus deskworker, 6.004 LA
junior spring: East Campus deskworker, 6.004 LA
senior fall: 6.004 LA, 6.02 grader, 6.046 grader, worked for a startup
senior spring: 6.004 TA (you need department approval to have other jobs while you’re TAing)</p>
<p>It is extremely unusual for undergrads to be TAs in course 6, but if you get an A in a class, it’s pretty easy to become an LA (lab assistant) if there’s a lab component. I also think that I held more jobs than that, but I can’t remember off the top of my head.</p>
<p>I definitely had to learn to manage my time properly, but my grades were good enough to get into the MIT master’s program, so I guess I figured it out.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t recommend that you have four jobs, though. I was also flying all over the country for job interviews and taking three classes at the same time, and that was annoying.</p>
<p>@IsaacM - yeah, I have a 2015 and a potential 2016 son - looking more likely after today’s FA decision! </p>
<p>The meal plan isn’t THAT expensive - I think we did the math and it worked out to about $120 a week, so less than $20 a day or $10 a meal. I think a la carte the meals are like $9 Breakfast, $11 Lunch and $13 Dinner or close so you do come out ahead if you eat all meals there but again if you think you’d eat like half, just pay as you go until you find you’re coming out behind. All this will be tracked on techcash if you use that so you’ll have easy access to those records to help you determine.</p>
<p>Definitely not with EC or Random would you even want to consider trying to eat the minimum Freshman meal plan of 14 meals. It just wouldn’t happen. </p>
<p>Also, I was just sharing what my son had told me about friends, not at all trying to say that people didn’t get jobs or they weren’t available. First of all, he’s only a freshman so obviously TA positions weren’t available first semester and are still hard to find as a freshman. Second, most of his friends are in ROTC and aren’t looking for jobs because A. Their tuition is paid for and B. They already have a huge time commitment elsewhere. Sorry if I didn’t phrase that well.</p>
<p>@lidusha - If you’re thinking of 6.006 TAs, they’re hybrid undergrad-grad students right now. Also, some course 6 classes are joint with course 18, which results in special undergrad TAness.</p>
And to add to this, it’s pretty common for people to be on tight budgets – in general, MIT students come from less affluent backgrounds than students at other top schools, so your group of friends will likely include people who don’t have a lot of money and/or need to pay their own non-school expenses. In my group of friends, for example, our varying financial circumstances generally led to us compromising to the lowest common denominator and spending a lot of cheap weekends together eating pizza and watching movies rather than going out to dinner. </p>
<p>I spent about $200 per month on food when I was an undergrad.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I would recommend not buying a meal plan, particularly if you live in a dorm far away from the dining dorms (EC, Senior, Random). I live in a dorm without a meal plan and often we cook together in the suites. There are lots of rotational programs where you cook for a lot of people one night every week or every two weeks, and you get fed on the other nights. These are all set up by floor and vary a lot. </p></li>
<li><p>I haven’t been keeping exact tabs on this, but it sounds about right. Rent or borrow as many textbooks as you can to help yourself out with this.</p></li>
<li><p>Couple hundred dollars a month? If you do it right, you can get a lot of free food from events too.</p></li>
<li><p>Yes, it is relatively easy to find part time jobs. As said above, UROPs can also be paying jobs. Right now I have a part time job in the theater department and a UROP- it is definitely doable time-wise. MIT does not allow its undergrads to work more than 20 hours a week on the MIT payroll during the semester anyway, so it’s not like you could go crazy and work an MIT-paid full time job during term.</p></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>There are way, way, WAY more than five TAs in course 6</li>
<li>Your friends don’t have TAships, as TAships are only awarded to graduate students. So, while your friends may be doing all of the work of a TA, they aren’t a TA in the department’s eyes, and they aren’t getting paid as TAs. I receive a stipend, but course 6 also pays my tuition.</li>
</ol>
<p>This is pretty typical, as TAs are super expensive for a department to have, as getting a TAship also means that your tuition gets paid for. However, undergraduate teaching jobs (paid hourly, not salary) are relatively easy to get.</p>