Would MITers comment on Dorms and Meals

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>I recently learned from a parent of a MIT freshman--that the meal plan isn't a meal plan...
meaning no swipe your card, eat at a buffet and off you go...
but its like an a la carte thing...</p>

<p>and her son is living in a dorm
-with co-ed bathrooms,
-he shares a kitchen (so fixes breakfast and eats in his single room)
-bags his lunch and
-either fixes something in the kitchennette or has Subway for dinner.</p>

<p>Our son feels MIT is a great match BUT he is an athlete and will continue to be a varsity athlete in college..so balancing heavy academics and athletic practices..he will not be able to live on poptarts and Subway.</p>

<p>Whats the deal on the dorms?
Whats the deal on the meal plan? </p>

<p>I have read on MITs website about the meal controversy. Is there any plan in the works to remedy it.</p>

2

<p>The foundation of the MIT dining plan (and, more broadly, the MIT experience as a whole) is choice.</p>

<p>There are dining halls where students can eat for lunch or dinner, if they choose to do so. If your son would prefer to have every meal prepared for him, he can – there are restaurants in the student center open for breakfast, several cafes and restaurants open for lunch, and dorm dining halls and restaurants open for dinner. </p>

<p>Many students, however, choose to cook for themselves, as you mentioned. I lived in a dorm with kitchens, and I cooked dinner for myself almost every night. It wasn’t necessarily a time-consuming task – often, I would prepare a casserole or a pan of lasagna on Sunday night and eat it for dinner all week. But that was a choice I made that fit neatly into my schedule and my proclivities. Other friends of mine ate frequently at the dining halls, or joined living groups that served meals (such as fraternities), or ordered food from local restaurants. Nobody starved, and most people were quite happy with the arrangements they’d set up.</p>

<p>I’m not sure how the co-ed bathrooms relate to food – most of my friends did not eat in the bathroom. :slight_smile: But, again, the foundation of the MIT experience is choice: students who don’t want a co-ed living situation can choose to avoid one. Freshmen pick their dorms, and upperclassmen can additionally choose to live in fraternities, sororities, or independent living groups, many of which are single-sex. Personally, I lived in a co-ed suite in a co-ed dorm, and didn’t find it terribly scintillating – I never saw anybody naked involuntarily.</p>

<p>EDIT: A thread from last year with a range of perspectives on dining: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/698297-what-can-we-tell-you-will-help-you-make-your-decision-4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/698297-what-can-we-tell-you-will-help-you-make-your-decision-4.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

3

<p>I personally much prefer the style of dining we have here to the kind my friends seem to have at their colleges. At MIT, you really do get to choose. I know plenty of people in my dorm who have never eaten in an MIT dining hall. I know some other people who eat at dining halls almost every night. I, personally, work with some combination of cooking, eating at cafes and places like Au Bon Pain or Cosi (which are conveniently located in Kendall Square), and grabbing something quick at Verde’s at the Student Center when I’m running really late. I feel like the system we have here also prepares you better for the real world, both in the sense of teaching you how to cook or fend for yourself, and in the financial, feeding yourself sense. I know someone who graduated from Brown and didn’t even know how to boil water to make pasta, since he’d never, ever cooked. And just recently, I had a friend visit me and mention how she felt like if she went to MIT she’d spend a lot more money on food than she currently does. I asked her how much her meal plan cost at her school, and it turns out it was almost double what I tend to spend on food for a semester. Plus, cooking for yourself is probably healthier. </p>

<p>The controversy regarding dining is less between-students, IMO, and more between students and the administration. MIT Dining consistently loses money and has to be subsidized, and so the administration wants to make dining mandatory for certain groups of people. MIT students get very unhappy when you start taking away the options that they feel are an integral part of their living groups and communities.</p>

4

<p>I’m also the parent of a freshman. I had heard some friends that are parents of a current junior that their son wasn’t eating well and that they ordered food to be delivered to his dorm the last two weeks of one semester, they were so worried about his health.</p>

<p>On the other hand, DS seems to be thriving with the hall kitchen set-up and is making himself popular by cooking his specialties (courtesy of Boy Scout training and learning some recipes from his momma). The ability to cook certainly saves money. Now that he’s on his own with his budget his practical side is coming out.</p>

5

<p>I would love if we had a reasonable meal plan (low in cost, dining hall nearby) with good food. But we don’t, and no reasonable plans have been proposed.</p>

<p>That said, I’ve found great value in my arrangement. I buy my own food for fairly cheap at the market and am learning to cook for myself. “Life skills.” And being that a fair number of people on my hall cook, we’ve found community in the kitchen :D</p>

<p>I recall Notre Dame’s food being quite tasty and Cal Poly’s food being fairly bad. I’d like something like Notre Dame a little more than what I have now, but I’ll take this over Cal Poly’s any day of the week and twice on Sunday.</p>

6

<p>To be honest, dining here without cooking for yourself is not so great. Meals here are relatively expensive ($8-9 for dinner), the dining halls are only open 5 or 6 days a week and only for dinner. The 50% off plan is a total waste of money unless you plan on eating in dining halls almost exclusively for dinner, and the food is pretty repetitious it seems (especially for vegetarians for me). </p>

<p>But the big advantage is that if you live in a dorm that doesn’t have a dining hall and good kitchen facilities (say…BC where I live) you get to cook for yourself. It is cheaper, you get to decide what to eat, more variety, and it is a vital life skill. For a foodie/cooking fanatic such as myself, the ability to cook for myself was a no brainer, and a big part of why I ranked BC as #1 (since living here, I have found 30482390423904 other reasons). Cooking does take time, but if you do it right it can only cost 1-2 hours per week. I cook in large quantaties of maybe 1-2 dishes on the weekends, then eat that during the week for lunch/dinner (I combine the two meals together, I am weird like that). Just keep eggs (which can be conveniently microwaved), cereal, oatmeal, fruits, and snacks on hand and your food needs are met. And have I mentioned its cheaper? It is ridiculous, I can get away with about $40-$45 a week for food if I shop at Trader Joe’s (which by the way is the best store ever…no lie)</p>

7

<p>

To be fair, though, that’s reflective of the cost of living in Boston rather than anything MIT-specific. The restaurants on/near campus that take Tech Cash don’t charge more than other restaurants in the Boston area. It’s just that the Boston area is a relatively expensive place to live.</p>

8

<p>Granted this is true, but it is still much more expensive than purchasing your own food and cooking. Sorry I am used to “eating out meals” being on the order of $15 (NYC suburban kid here) so I was comparing dining halls to cooking for yourself rather than what other joints in the MIT area would charge. That is actually a stupid comparison as if you are using the dining halls, you probably won’t cook for yourself!</p>

<p>Can you tell a certain bias I have towards cooking for yourself? ;)</p>

9

<p>One thing I found weird is Next’s 300$~ dinner plan, which cuts food prices in half but is MANDATORY. What is the point of this? EC has a good deal though, they make their own food, usually for everyone on their floor, and split the bill.</p>

10

<p>Um, as someone who actually <em>lives</em> in EC (and I think Piper can back me up on this one), that’s not actually how things work. We have a great sense of community, but I don’t know of a single hall that actually has some sort of communal happy group cooking schedule, where I’ll cook dinner on Mondays and you’ll cook lunch on Tuesdays and we’ll all pay for ingredients and live in harmony.</p>

<p>The mandatory dining plan is a Thing. I haven’t really heard any compelling reasons for why it exists, but the general sentiment seems to be that if you don’t want to pay an extra $300 a semester, you should live somewhere without a dining hall.</p>

<p>That being said, I have never eaten in a dining hall and am far from starving to death. Piper and I are even taking an EC-sponsored cooking class together on Wednesday nights! MIT dining is awesome, and you will have to cook on your own sometime. Also it’s a great way to get ladies. Trust me, they’re all over me once they taste my butter chicken or beef stroganoff or lasagna.</p>

<p>I feel like MIT dining has been discussed a <em>lot</em>, both on CC and elsewhere. Do you have any specific questions, or would it be OK if we just pointed you to previous threads?</p>

11

<p>Basically I think the $300 (or is it $350?) a semester for halls with dining facilities is to keep dining halls afloat. If they didn’t have this, they would probably go out of business. MIT can’t not had dining halls otherwise some % of their student body would be negatively effected and have to <em>gasp</em> learn to cook or go somewhere else. Also, parents tend to freak out when they hear that a college doesn’t have dining halls. Some parents already freak out about the current system, MIT doesn’t want to make things worse on that front.</p>

12

<p>You have just hit upon one of the hot topics, here at MIT. Dining here reflects that intellectual atmosphere of MIT students: independent, recalcitrant, and self-sufficient. For the best or the worst, the institute does very little in accomodating proper dining, since MIT students are AGAINST such initiative.</p>

<p>Uh… I don’t know where Mollie pulled this out from, but there AREN’T dining halls for lunch. So either you’ll just eat subway, one of the not so high quality food/boxed lunches around campus, you cook for yourself, or you eat at a dining hall, whose dining plan is fairly crappy (300$, just to get 50% off the food, ONLY for diners), and NO buffet (except some random place behind simmons or sth).</p>

<p>However, I have to say, there ARE some good opportunities for the gluttonous:

  1. Join a frat (they probably have the best food around, better than dining halls)
  2. Learn to cook (you’ll realize it’s actually fairly quick to cook, given the choices, that’s what a lot of people do here).
  3. Suck it up and eat poorly (what I’m doing now, my stomach will hate me, but Oh, well I’m pretty good at sucking it up).
  4. Live at Random Hall (It’s right next to Shaws)
  5. Live at French House (awesome team cooking)/or some other house where team cooking is prevalent.</p>

<p>However, other than food, MIT is truly an awesome place to study. Very few institutions can even be close to compare in terms of atmosphere, opportunities, accomplishment of student body, enthusiasm for initiative and creativity in science/engineering/math.</p>

<p>If I’d known about the food conditions, I would have chosen MIT nevertheless (over HYPS), despite the weird food system.</p>

<p>Coed-bathrooms:</p>

<p>They aren’t that bad. I barely notice it, and just be courteous. 90% of the time I need to go, I will be alone in the bathrooms anyways.</p>

13

<p>^ Backing Karen up.</p>

<p>I’ve certainly heard/seen of clusters of people making their own food, but I’ve never heard of people making meals for the entire hall. It would definitely be false to say “usually”. (This situation does fairly accurately reflect pika’s arrangement, to my knowledge. pika is an independent living group - or ILG. And no, they don’t capitalize.)</p>

<p>Perhaps you’re confusing regular meals for hall feeds? Every once in a while, my hall will have someone organize (and get reimbursed for) feeding the hall, but this is usually in the form of sugary awesome, not meal food.</p>

14

<p>

Oh, I was just sort of loosely referring to MIT-owned places of business for lunch – I think of Lobdell, for example, as a dining hall, or the cafeteria in Stata. I suppose they’re not really dining halls in the strictest sense. But there are tons of places around campus to eat for lunch without any boxes being involved.</p>

15

<p>Thanks for the insight</p>

<p>I mentioned the dorm situation of the freshman–to give you a bigger picture of what the parent was saying…and from that students situation–</p>

<p>that said–we have 2 boys so our son doesn’t have to negotiate bathroom time with a sister–I was thinking privacey for all around --but it sounds like it works fine for those who choose it.</p>

<p>As for the dining–am I clear that the dining program is only dinner? or is it lunch/dinner depending on location?
Student center has Anna T etc…and some of those places are open for breakfast? </p>

<p>Last weekend we were in Cambridge and ate at the Miracle of Science and The Friendly Toast but thats too time and money consuming to be a regular thing (not to mention off a regular class/study route) ;o)</p>

<p>We appreciate hearing how others make it work–Our son has some cooking skills (hey he’s an Eagle Scout–be prepared and all that) I am just thinking–starving student and pop tarts or another Subway does not make a good match…and had heard the al la carte food thing is pricey.</p>

<p>My own Jr and Sr yr was spent in a condo and we 4 girls did cook M-Th–One took each night and we cooked for the 4…and shared the cost of dinner food. breakfast and lunches were on our own…but that worked for us…don’t know how many kitchens per hall/suite thing are set up here…</p>

<p>Seems like the frats have a large percentage of students–is it truly more than 50% ?
Is that because of the living accomodations/food ;o)</p>

<p>Glad to find some thoughts here–as this isn’t the kind of thing an admissions officer will be able to shed light on so readily.</p>

16

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</p>

<p>Yes, a million times, yes!</p>

<p>I can’t cook worth crap, I was without a dining hall/meal plan, and yet I managed to eat just fine (not takeout all the time). Nobody will be forced to live on Pop Tarts and Subway. The situation is what it is because MIT students value individual freedom (and not being forced to pay through their noses for overpriced dining hall food - people who do are doing it voluntarily).</p>

<p>IMO there is nothing that really needs to be “remedied”. It would be nice if there were, <em>in addition to</em> (not replacing) all the current options, a centrally-located dining hall with quality food, but that is not really financially feasible.</p>

<p>If you really can’t handle dealing with your own food, there are living groups that will allow outsiders to join their meal plans (e.g. pika’s meal plan, French House’s “social member” concept). In some cases, you don’t even have to learn to cook to join these - at pika, for instance, you have to cook OR clean when it’s your night, but not both.</p>

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<p>Yes, these are pretty common. The dorms are people’s homes. People get to use the bathrooms in their homes. I’m guessing that your home also has non-gender-segregated bathrooms.</p>

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<p>It’s not normally <em>more</em> than 50% of the men, but it’s frequently close to that. And no, it is not an issue of dissatisfaction with the dorms. Most MIT people who live in dorms love their dorms! I think MIT has one of the best dorm systems in the country, possibly the best, and most people that I encountered agreed! The people who are living in the fraternities, live there because they like the community of that particular fraternity better than the communities of the various dorms (just as the people who live in a certain dorm generally live there because they like its community better than those of their other options).</p>

<p>I am probably coming off as frothing again in this thread, but it is always bizarre to me when I hear things that I and practically everyone I knew thought of as overwhelming positives, things that are all about flexibility and choice, characterized as negatives.</p>

17

<p>Jessiehl</p>

<p>I am sorry my question offended you in some way–
We just wondered whether the lack of a swipe and go dining plan so popular in other schools was an issue.
I dont think students at MIT are any more independent that any other university because of the dining option “choice” but I suppose some hang there hat on it.
If you live in some dorms don’t they have to dine there or be a memeber–something like that?
I am not clear on how it works–and only got one recent opinion from a parent of a freshman.
Thats the beauthy of asking here.</p>

18

<p>fogfog - For one, the dining plan here is much different from at other universities. Ours gets us half off the food, whereas other places have all-you-can-eat for a swipe. (Though that’s not really the main issue. I’m just pointing it out.)</p>

<p>From my understanding, any MIT student can dine at any dining hall if they wish (though you only get 1/2 off if you’re on the dining plan). Most just don’t find it worth it, from a money or taste perspective.</p>

19

<p>I would definitely say that I’ve gained a <em>lot</em> of maturity by having to learn to cook, watching what I eat, needing to plan ahead to buy groceries etc. etc. I know that you may not see it like this, but I think that most of my friends would agree that cooking for ourselves has helped us mature. When I meet up with my friends from high school, many of them are still mystified by recipes and can only really make chocolate chip cookies, and they’re pretty impressed at my cooking prowess.</p>

<p>I really don’t see the appeal of an AYCE system - I know that I would definitely just sit down with a plate of pasta and gorge myself on carbs or something and not actually think about what I’m putting in my mouth. I’m kind of confused about where this whole idea that college kids are entitled to eat as much dining hall food as they want came from - it certainly isn’t present in most high schools, and I doubt most parents cook up a fresh buffet of assorted offerings for their offspring each day…</p>

20

<p>fogfog - MIT seal is “mens et manus” which means ‘mind and hand.’ So they can cook. My son, a freshman has been cooking since September. He did not know to cook anything at home except microwave cup noodle. He learns cooking skills from people on the same dorm floor. Sincerely, I think you should not worry about this. I told him to buy some meals to save time but he said “Nop, it’s too expensive”.</p>