<p>Which meal plan is most efficient?</p>
<p>I'm trying to decide between 19 meals vs 15 meals, since I probably won't be able to use the full 23 meals.</p>
<p>I recommend the 15 meal option. I doubt I went over 15 meals in any week over my 3 years on the meal plan, and the food is less than spectacular (unless things have changed since 2010).</p>
<p>I believe you can always upgrade your meal plan midway through the semester (at a prorated cost), so perhaps the best option is to go for the cheaper plan and pay for your extra meals at first, eventually switching to the other plan if your supplementary meals will seem to cost too much (is there some Ski Rental Problem type of analysis to do here?).</p>
<p>I’d like to know what current students think about this too. My son signed up for 15. He generally doesn’t eat much in the morning. They seem pretty flexible about changing your meal plan, a lot of colleges aren’t.</p>
<p>Cross-posted!</p>
<p>My son, who is a senior now, took the 15 meal/wk plan. If you figure out the per meal cost, it’s pretty high, especially for breakfast. My son always just kept some cereal in his room & milk in the mini fridge for a quick breakfast.</p>
<p>He took the block meal plan as a junior, but this year, after he figured the per meal cost, he decided to just do pay as you go. He also tends to eat off campus more now, and he didn’t want to be tied to the meal plan.</p>
<p>As usual, cessium55 is correct - you can increase your meal plan at any time (but only decrease at the beginning of a semester), so you might as well start at 15 meals:</p>
<p>“Students may increase or decrease the size of their dining plan up until the first Friday after the day classes begin for a particular semester. After this date, only increases will be allowed.”</p>
<p>[Rensselaer</a> Polytechnic Institute: Rensselaer Student Dining Plan Agreement Form 2013 - 2014](<a href=“http://j2ee.rpi.edu/swf/setup.do?target=diningPlanAgreement]Rensselaer”>http://j2ee.rpi.edu/swf/setup.do?target=diningPlanAgreement)</p>
<p>Thanks. Just finished and sent my residence/meal plan preferences in today. </p>
<p>Do people do any cooking at all? The dorm kitchen I saw when I visited was extremely sparse compared to some other schools I’ve visited.</p>
<p>Take the 15 or even less. My D had the 19 and she submitted to go down to 15 at beginning of 2nd semester (the only time you can go down) and they claimed they didn’t get her submission & she was stuck at 19.</p>
<p>Per meal it works out to being around $7-$8 I think. Yes even for breakfast. She also eats off campus a lot because she doesn’t like the campus food that much. The union has some good options but isn’t on the meal plan I think. You can use flex dollars at various locations around & those she finds useful.</p>
<p>As for cooking in dorms - Barton doesn’t have a stove but some of the others have a stove in basement or shared area. Barton had a microwave.</p>
<p>One thing worth mentioning is that the difference in cost between the 15 meal plan and the 19 meal plan is $330 (the added cost of $80 for the 19 meal plan, plus the lose of $250 flex dollars).</p>
<p>For simplicities sake, assuming 32 weeks and 4 extra meals per week, that means the 128 extra meals cost you $330, or a little over $2.50 a meal.</p>
<p>The problem is that whenever you skip breakfast or go out for pizza instead of eating in the dining hall, you just wasted the meal…and the dining hall will get “old” pretty fast.</p>
<p>The Monday - Thursday late night dining might help to use up some of the meals each week, but my S had the Unlimited Plan (now the 23 meals a week plan) the first semester and only went to the late night dining once.</p>
<p>Since you have the option of increasing meals whenever you want, starting with 15 meals seems to be the way to go.</p>
<p>Also, now that I think of it, freshman year, my S and a group of friends in the dorm all took turns cooking Sunday dinner for the group in the dorm kitchen.</p>
<p>I’m currently a freshman and I’m at 15, I don’t have any problems. Remember that you can start at 15, then go up to 19 or 23 if you need to, but after the first week you can’t decrease your meal plan.</p>
<p>Take the minimum. The food at RPI, according to my son a sophmore, is lousy. My son eats all his lunches in the Union which has much better food. My son cant wait to move off campus next year and eat much better. </p>
<p>Most nights there arent simple options such as pasta and meatballs.</p>