<p>Though I still won't be going to college for about another year or so, I've consistently had several recurring questions float around in my mind;</p>
<p>1.) Food. Is the food provided in cafeterias free? And is it good? I'm assuming you pay for you year's meals with annual tuition, but you never know. I'm planning to attend aLiberal Arts colleges, such as Skidmore, Colgate, Middlebury, Bard, Reed, etc. So, is food free? Is it good? I read about this Freshman 15 experience, with many saying that fast food is cheap and good, so many students gain weight this way. But why buy fast food when your school gives you food? And just eat healthily; the schools provided breakfast, lunch, and dinner, right? </p>
<p>2.) Laundary...I'm assuming all schools have laundary machines and dryers, right? </p>
<p>I have not come across any colleges with free food in the cafeteria I'm afraid. Generally you buy some sort of meal plan the cost of which will depend on the school. My Ds school (a State U so I don't know how LACs compare) has meal plans varying in price from $950-$1500 per semester. </p>
<p>All schools my D looked at had laundry facilities at the dorms. Also not free.</p>
<p>Most that we saw are coin operated. She thinks the suites she is hoping to get into have free machines shared by the suites on the floor - I'll believe free anything when I see it :)</p>
<p>The food plans seem to vary by school. My son was at a smaller school and his meal plan you paid for certain number of meals a week - not much choice just cafeteria type food - if you did not eat the meals you lost them. My Ds school you choose to pay a certain amount (about 5 plan choices) and can spend as much or as little on a meal as you choose. Varies from cafeteria style all you can eat at a fixed price to a la carte offerings with many chains being on campus like chik fil e, burger joints, sushi, pizza - kind of like a mall food court where you go to the individual vendor but the tables are in a general area. She can carry some $$ over to next semester. So it really varies</p>
<p>i would say that most schools probably do have meal plans that you have to pay for so it isn't free. just hope your school has good food in the cafeteria. i wish mine did.</p>
<p>as for washing machines and dryers, at my school they are actually free. you can wash and dry as many times as you want. it's the irony of all things at my school i suppose. they want to take every last cent from your pocket but let you wash and dry for free. i gotta admit the dryers here suck. the machines dry for a max of 50 minutes and i'm constantly having to leave clothes in overtime because 50 minutes doesn't do it. keep in mind i'm not even stuffing all my clothes in one machine. i've gotten used to separating them out because of how bad these dryers are. worse thing to happen to me tonight. i washed my comforter and took it out. part of it seemed dry, but there was part of it that wasn't (i couldn't see it or feel it until after I went to bed). i was ****ed to have to go back to dry again. it's the only complaint i have. but it's free so forget my complaint lol.</p>
<p>Our dining hall food is decent. But when you want to buy Chick-fil-a or pizza from the student center with a meal from your meal pan, it is SO complicated. Your meal can only cost so much money before you go into your bonus bucks (extra $$$ for whatever you need in the student center, like pens, or paper towels or whatever). You can only eat in the student center at certain times of day if you want to use a meal from your meal plan. </p>
<p>Laundry is the perky upside of that very complicated system. Room and Board at my school includes $10,000 (yes ten THOUSAND) PER YEAR to do as much washing and drying if you want. The machines are controlled by student ID that you swipe on the box that operates the machines on the wall in the laundry room. Right now, they still haven't turned the box back on, so laundry is TOTALLY FREE :)</p>
<p>Laundry at the University of Minnesota is free. All the cafeterias are all you can eat, but you use one of the meals for your week every time you go in.</p>
<p>Laundry at my school (state U) is $2.00 a load--$1.25 wash, $.75 dry--and operates with our ID card. We have to add money to an account but it's not bad. But it's not really "free" at the above mentioned schools--it's probably built into student fees somewhere. Like at my school we can ride the city bus lines for free w/ our ID card (on and off campus)--but the raised one of our fees a few years back to help cover it. You'll use the laundry (or bus) more than the fee covers, but whatever.</p>
<p>Food is bought on a meal plan, as stated by the people above me</p>
<p>The "board" part of "room & board" refers to food. Usually if the school requires all freshmen to live in the dorms, they will require them to purchase some sort of meal plan as well. This is how it works at my school. The meal plan the freshmen get is set up so that you can go in the dining hall an unlimited number of times, and then you have about $200 extra on the card that you can use at various school-run eateries around campus. There are other meal plans where you get a set amount of meals per week, and if you want to go in the dining hall more often than that, you have to pay. From what I can tell, most schools have a similar setup. I guess you could say that it seems "free" in the sense that your meal plan gets paid for along with your tuition and whatnot, so you never actually visibly spend money to eat there.</p>
<p>When I visited colleges we always tried out the dining hall, and I never had any food that was really bad, but it was never really outstanding either. Just kind of eh. People get tired of eating it all the time or they want to eat when the dining hall's closed, so they get fast food. That and alcohol is probably primarily why people would gain weight. </p>
<p>Our laundry was coin-operated....$1 to wash and $.75 to dry I think, although it has probably gone up by now since that was 3 years ago. We had to use quarters but some schools have a setup where you can put money on a card, or use your card and have it charged to your account.</p>
<p>very dependent on individual school. at my school, we had an unlimited meal plan, meaning if you wanted to eat 5 dinners in 5 different dining halls, you could, for no extra charge.</p>
<p>Many colleges have some "all you can eat option" for a fixed price and/or a choice of meal plans. Food varies from edible to pretty good in most cases. Increasingly they use chip-cards which you load in advance with money or meal plan credit and these also may work in the washing machines-dryers.</p>
<p>Goucher college has e-suds--you can monitor your washing progress on the PC from your room and go get it when it's done!</p>
<p>ok heres my particular situation - im sure many colleges are similar. </p>
<p>we have two dining halls on each quad. we can eat in either dining hall, though most people on my (north) quad eat in north dining hall. the food is not free - it is part of our meal plan which we pay for with our room and board payment. my meal plan has 14 meals which i can use for breakfast, lunch or dinner any day of the week and 300$ which i can use at the burger king, sbarro, subway, starbucks, grocery store, or any of the coffee shops on campus. athletes generally go for the 21 meal plan because they are up very early in the morning. </p>
<p>laundry, for the most part, is done by students in machines in each dorms' basement. i do most of my laundry, except for dry cleaning and my really nice shirts when they need to be ironed. for those i go to a laundromat on campus.</p>
<p>We have meal plans that cost $1800/semester (and are mandatory, if you live in the dorms). There are various types, ranging from 19 meals/wk +$100 stars bucks to 9 meals/wk +300 stars bucks. We have one all-you-can-eat cafeteria, and the stars bucks are spent in Alvins cafe, which has sandwiches, salads, drinks, ice cream, and Starbucks-type coffee, all a la carte. </p>
<p>Laundry is coin operated, and costs $1.50/load. It sucks, because you have to have quarters, and the change machine only works sometimes, and only with $1 bills.</p>
<p>At my school:
Meals-You select a meal plan at the beginning of each term. Your meal plan will include some combination of dining hall meals and snack bar dollars (first term freshmen all start with 20 meals/week+$75 dining dollars.)</p>
<p>Laundry-You load money on your student ID card and then swipe it to do laundry like a debit card. Wash and dry are each $.75.</p>