<p>It’s arguably the single best thing about Brown. Lol ;)</p>
<p>My advice is to load up your card with 500 dollars one time … that won’t be enough for 4 years, but the less you recharge, the less you spend on fees.</p>
<p>p.s. are any of you guys interested in setting up a sort of student cooking alliance? It’ll be really useful for midnight snacks. :p</p>
<p>galoisien…$500 dollars on what? CavAdvantage or Meal Plan? If we have plus dollars left at the end of the year, does it roll over to the next year? And if we have money in the CavAdvantage account, does that roll over?</p>
<p>student cooking alliance seems interesting…I can’t cook though. I’m probably going to end up buying some of those heat and eat things and just keep that on me in case I get super hungry at night.</p>
<p>I didn’t really cook when I entered college either – winter break (dining halls closed) forced me to learn to cook and then I realised how much cheaper cooking was. A lot of the secret is really just temperature control. And chemistry. But that’s more like the secret to making it fun.</p>
<p>You want to put 500 dollars on CavAdvantage, because IIRC that’s the part that rolls over.</p>
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<p>Pls keep me posted on that. Now that I will be living in GM I will have a place to cook.</p>
<p>So is cooking really that much cheaper (when compared to the dining plans)? Also, does any one know of any student that might have brought in cooking stuff (like a toaster) into their dorm room? And do the fire marshalls come once a year, once a semester, or do they check even more regularly than that?</p>
<p>Cooking is much cheaper, but consider that you really need a car to go to Barrack’s (otherwise you’re stuck hauling groceries on the bus and that is NOT fun).</p>
<p>My roommate has a coffee maker. I would really discourage a toaster, we’ve had a lot of fire alarms in Brown because of toasters so that would get you a hefty fine if it ever burned some crumbs in your room and set off the alarm. You can bring a water warmer (forget the real name) but if you have a microwave you can just microwave water and it’s all the same. My brother wanted to bring his George Forman Grill to UMich but an RA saw him moving it in and made him leave it with our parents to take home, lol.</p>
<p>Fire Marshalls come once per year (at least in Brown), you get an email warning a few days in advance, I’ve had them come fall semester twice and spring semester once in my 3 years.</p>
<p>If you’re a first year it’s irrelevant anyways because you’re required to have a meal plan.</p>
<p><a href=“otherwise%20you’re%20stuck%20hauling%20groceries%20on%20the%20bus%20and%20that%20is%20NOT%20fun”>quote</a>.
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<p>Hey I do that every week. 
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<p>I really hate grocery shopping on rainy days, but otherwise I just get things to put in my bag. I can fit a gallon of milk inside my bag, frozen chicken, a bag of onions, 30 eggs…</p>
<p>Cooking is really much cheaper. The per meal cost of a FY dining plan must be somewhere around 7 or 8 dollars a meal (assuming 15 meals / wk). Outrageous. You can cook up an entire day’s meal with a few dollars’ worth of ingredients. </p>
<p>And oh dessert you can make enough egg custard tart to feed 10 people with like 500 mL of milk (31 cents), 9 eggs (90 cents), 40 cents’ worth of flour, 30 cents’ worth of sugar and 2 sticks of margarine (50 cents)…and then for some flavor additives, like a quarter of penny’s worth of vanilla extract and 2 cents’ worth of pandanus…</p>
<p>Total cost $2.44 =) for a dessert item that might cost 15-20 dollars at the supermarket.</p>
<p>Back to the dining plans that first years must have…D signed up for her plan. Now looking at SIS she is being billed for two plans- the one that UVA included and the one that she selected. Has this happened to anyone else? Is this something that will resolve itself? Thanks.</p>
<p>Yes, a lot of people got double-billed last year. That’ll fix itself. </p>
<p>(And if it doesn’t, just give SFS a call…)</p>
<p>i got double billed as well</p>
<p>The athletic dining plan is the best. Of course, if you’re not an athlete, you can’t enroll. Even if you can enroll, you still have to swipe your ID to gain access into JPJ where the dining hall is at.</p>
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<p>Actually, I think you can enroll – they just don’t tell you you can.</p>
<p>and first years are going to walk over to JPJ all the time if they’re not athletes?? that’s a good mile from Brown, let alone new dorms…</p>
<p>The food is supposed to be considerably better though.</p>
<p>Well JPJ is 5-7 minutes away from IRC whereas O-Hill is like 10-13 minutes…</p>
<p>I suppose you can enroll if you’re not an athlete, but I doubt it; usually, athletes automatically are enrolled into a mealplan because of their scholarship status. However, if you call dining and creepily signs up for one, then that’s your problem… But how are you going to get into JPJ without access privileges? Don’t make life hard for yourself. And who are you going to eat with? Yourself?</p>