<p>Thank you for all of your responses! They were very helpful.</p>
<p>Just wanted to add to the co-op food discussion. My son actually lived in a co-op before and told me that for a large part of the meals, students were helping with the dish washing and food preparation, TOGETHER with the hired chefs. This is something to consider if you are looking to live in a co-op or eat the food there, with the food being anywhere from good to questionable (in terms of cleanliness and sanitation). My son’s co-op food was included in the rent, but involved kitchen chores once a week and bathroom chores once a month.</p>
<p>My son will be living in an apartment this upcoming year and will have a full kitchen, oven and refrigerator. I think he has chosen to go with a hybrid self-cook, dining hall, and eating out-plan, after reading your replies.</p>
<p>bclintonk, in other areas of the country that’s known as a subterranean diet. ;)</p>
<p>Best arrangement I had in college was the 2.5 years in a small unofficial co-op with about a dozen residents. Everyone was on dinner prep/cleanup duty once a week. One of the housework committees was in charge of coming up with weekly menus and shopping lists; another committee did the weekly grocery shopping. It was a primarily vegetarian menu, drawn heavily from the Moosewood cookbook. Great system: you got six generally tasty, nutritious homestyle dinners a week while only having to spend one evening in the kitchen. If you were running late or had other commitments around dinnertime, there’d be dinner waiting for you when you got back home. Saturday night people either went out or scrounged leftovers.</p>
<p>Dorm food meant no work commitment, but the quality of the dorm food didn’t compare. Living alone was more restful, but cooking for myself meant a more limited diet: if I was going to cook 1-2x a week that meant I was eating a lot of leftovers the rest of the time.</p>
<p>I can’t read this whole thread, but did anybody mention the importance of socializing that takes place during meals? My daughter moved off campus to a lovely room and bath with kitchen privilidges so she could make organic vegan meals at a fraction of the cost of the meal plan, but she was LONELY.</p>
<p>I think the max amount of dining hall meals per week that is needed is 10 – you can even get away with about 8. That means 5 lunches and 3 dinners per week; lunches tend to get used because as students are going from class to class, they don’t always have time to get back to a dorm/apartment kitchen for lunch or to stop at a restaurant. Dinners - there’s lots of going out on Thursday and Friday nights, so M-W may be the only nights that people are regularly eating in the dining halls. That leaves the student on their own for breakfast each morning (if they eat it), 2 dinners per week - when they may want to go out or cook so as to get something that isn’t cafeteria food, and all weekend meals. Breakfast seems to be the worst meal on which to use dining plans – they charge about $8 for every meal, yet most students will still only eat a bowl of cereal or a bagel – food they can keep at home for much cheaper, even if they don’t have a kitchen and just have a mini fridge. At least for a $8 lunch or dinner, they are getting a sandwich/entr</p>