D accepted her admissions offer yesterday for Swanson CoE. As we start to move forward with the details, I was hoping to get some advice from CC regarding your experience with the different meal plan and card options that Pitt provides. The Pitt website doesn’t do a very good job of explaining why one feature may be better than another.
She’s leaning towards living in Forbes Hall to be part of the Engineering LLC, but she said she would be fine in the Towers if Forbes doesn’t work out. We’re leaning towards the 100 swipe, 825 dining dollar plan since she will probably have more meals at Einsteins in Bennedum Hall or at other locations that don’t accept the swipes. This is the lowest tier that Pitt will allow freshmen to have, so I’m looking at that as our baseline. My questions are:
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[] Will this be enough to cover her for the Fall semester? 100 swipes comes out to close to 1 meal per day at the Market Central or Perch dining halls (or the Market to Go take out), which I think may be more than she’ll use - especially if she lives in Forbes Hall. 825 Dining Dollars seems pretty limiting since it comes to ~$55/week over the semester. However, they’re much more flexible.
[] Is there an advantage to purchasing Dining Dollars over adding money to Panther Funds? Since Dining Dollars expire after the Spring semester, and since they can only be used at Pitt dining facilities, it seems to be pretty limiting. Since there are a lot of local businesses that accept Panther Funds, they would seem to be the better option unless Dining Dollars has some type of discount that they aren’t advertising.
[] Do Panther Funds ever expire? Pitt is referring to it as an alternative to cash, so I would assume that the funds never expire, but I’d like confirmation.
[] Are we better off going with a credit card (secured or rewards card) rather than bothering with putting money into additional Dining Dollars or Panther funds?
@shortnuke that is the best plan to get imo. I believe dining dollars roll over to the next semester (but need to empty by end of year) but that swipes must be used (or you lose them) by end of semester. Can someone pls confirm that is still the case? In any case, you are correct, most engineering kids will live in Benedum and eat at Einsteins or maybe if time is avail run down to Market Central or hit one of the grab-and-go kiosks. It will entirely depend on how your kid eats - mine never ate breakfast as a sit down meal but instead had granola bars in their rooms or grabbed a bagel before or after class. If you have a heavy eater, or one (like my #3) who is a foodie - there are way too many cool little places to try around town to be limited to a dining hall or anything on campus. For her - I had to really put funds into her pnc account for her to use. Anyway - you can see how it goes and adjust for second semester. I think you are picking the right plan for most kids. The swipes at dining halls grow old fast and there is really alot of better interesting options within walking distance.
As far as adding dining dollars - wait and see. I used panther funds only for on-campus expenses - LAUNDRY. I preferred her to use her debit card for everything else. Panther Funds are necessary for laundry. My son called me from the laundry room when he figured that out. Sitting on a load of wet laundry (someone loaned him) and no panther funds of his own. It is easy to load funds and they are available immediately (as I found out).
Yes - either a debit or credit card for all other expenses makes sense. I prefered the PNC acct because I could use a local branch to deposit funds (PNC will be at PittStart to get accts signed up (joint is what we did) easily in like 5-10 min.
Thanks @amandakayak ! According to Pitt’s website Dining Dollars roll over from Fall to Spring provided that you stay on the same meal plan or move to a higher tier in the Spring. Any unused Dining Dollars are lost at the end of the Spring Semester. I didn’t see any mention of expiration for Panther Funds.
Are you aware of any discounts or tax savings that would make Dining Dollars a more attractive option? At this point I don’t see the benefit of using them at all other than the fact that they can only be used at the Pitt dining locations.
Mine lived in Sutherland this past year. I believe she selected Plan C 130 Dining Passes with 625 Dining Dollars. As of last Thursday she had 11 swipes left and about 80.00 in dining dollars. She swipes twice a day during the week and about once a day on the weekends. She likes the food for the most part. Pitt dining does a great job IMO of creating special theme nights with good options and some nights they have “double swipe” night where they have premium items available for two swipes.
Also, she says the girls in the Engineering LLC in Forbes are tight and a great group. She likes her dorm but feels Forbes would’ve been a great choice also.
Best of luck with FYE and everything Pitt!! Feel free to message me if you have questions.
I don’t think there is any discount or incentive for using dining dollars - like grab and go has prices for everything, so you could use dining dollars, debit or credit or cash - all the same price. I felt it was pretty confusing to understand but the kids get the hang of everything alot faster than I did. The only sticking pt was that panther fund concept and I found the only thing that required the use of panther funds (that couldn’t be done by cash or credit/debit card) was that laundry. Unless that has changed, that was one thing I had to put some money in here and there.
I don’t think Panther Funds expire until you are no longer a Pitt student.
You can use them for other things, but D mostly uses PF for laundry, or coffee.
Go with the lowest amount of swipes, and more dining dollars. If she should run out of swipes, I think DD can be used to buy a meal swipe. Also there are some other campus food places that will accept the DD.
If she runs out of DD, you can add Panther Funds to her card, or she can use a credit card.
Any other advice? We’ll be selecting her dorm and meal plan this week. No where in the info. she’s been sent is there info. about Panther Funds. I need more detail overall than what they’ve provided. No costs listed by the different meal plans either.
Thank you so much @mommdc ! Perfect info. that I will sort through.
My girl is hung up on the location of Sutherland. This is so base to me that it is instantly aggravating. She loved the Honors Visit Day part when we heard from the several high achieving Honors kids and what they were doing and how they used the Honors College resources, etc. But if she doesn’t live in Sutherland, she can’t be in the Honors LLC. So this is ridiculous to me. All I’ve heard from her when I asked last week is that she’d like to be more centrally located on campus. Which is lower campus. No problem, but as an incoming freshman, I think it’s so important to be hooked in, and Honors LLC seems great. I told her that the Health Sciences LLC looks wonderful as well, and I know she likes that one. I explained that she’d probably live on a floor in the Towers, and that it would be centrally located, but not a great dorm. But we’ve seen worse. She is not a partyer, etc. (at least not yet, lol). She has always taken her studies very seriously, so I have no reason to think she would not at Pitt. Plus she needs to maintain a 3.5 for the P.A. auto admit. That’s no joke. I suggested the Emerging Leaders LLC, but she has no interest.
I am really trying to give her the freedom to choose an LLC. But what complicates things is that they are not all assigned a dorm. So she doesn’t know where she’d live. She’s not going to be in the Business, Nursing or Engineering LLCs. I would hate for her to just pick a dorm for the dorm’s sake. I think she would lose the amazing opportunities that could come from an LLC. I am thinking she just isn’t valuing the comaraderie, programming, structure, linking her into a group. I have explained this, so I know she has at least heard the rationale. And she doesn’t disagree with my points. Just hasn’t done anything as far as choosing an LLC and moving forward. Now her due date is May 4th, and I do not want to be last minute with the online sign up.
If she has a preference for a LLC, like health science, then she can apply to it and end up where she ends up.
It’s all going to be ok. All residence halls have serious students and partiers. All are adequate.
My D liked upper campus. She spent most of the day on lower campus with classes, lunch, etc, then go up to her dorm and eat dinner/study.
They get used to the climb, and there are shuttles too.
She wanted to only share a bathroom with a few people (even if they had to clean it).
One nice thing is if you are in honors housing freshman year, I think you are guaranteed to be able to live in honors sophomore year, which would enable her to live in Irvis Hall and later in Forbes/Craig, without having to go through the housing lottery.
@mommdc is right. The housing selection for upperclassman housing is one of THE biggest benefits of being in the honors LLC. These kids pretty much select their housing weeks before the rest of the campus and it’s nice not having to have the unknown of the lottery.