Meal plans cost roughly the same as other Ivies’

By Leslie Ye, The Dartmouth Staff

Published on Monday, January 9, 2012

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Despite student complaints about the cost of the new SmartChoice meal plan, the College’s recently instituted meal plans cost roughly the same amount as those of Dartmouth’s peer institutions, though Dartmouth Dining Services offers fewer dining hall options than most comparable institutions.

Dartmouth currently offers four meal plan options for undergraduate students. The most expensive meal plan is SmartChoice20 at $4,974 a year. The plan includes 20 meal swipes per week and $75 in DBA per term. SmartChoice14, priced at $4,725 per year, includes 14 meals a week and $125 of DBA. SmartChoice5, with five meals a week and $875 of DBA, costs $4,320 per year. The off-campus meal plan, SmartChoiceOC, offers $875 of DBA a term, totaling $2,625 over the course of a year. In addition, extra DBA, which used to roll over from term to term until the end of an academic year, is removed from students’ accounts at the end of each term.

The original set of meal plans included $200 a term of Topside DBA but has since been removed. Instead, students must pay for Topside out of their DA$H accounts or a declining Topside DBA account, which starts at $0 at the beginning of the term and has no limit. The balance is paid at the end of each term.

Freshmen were required to purchase the SmartChoice20 meal plan for the Fall term, but were permitted to switch their plans for Winter term.

In addition to the changes made to last year’s meal plans, the College also changed the hours of several campus dining facilities. This fall, Class of 1953 Commons began closing at 8 p.m. instead of offering late-night dining options until 12:30 a.m. The Courtyard Cafe no longer operates during breakfast hours and begins serving food at 11 a.m.

Additional changes have been made since the beginning of Winter term to both the dining halls’ hours and the food they serve. ’53 Commons’ hours have been extended and it now closes at 8:30 p.m. Hard ice cream has been added and the grill line has been expanded. Late Night Collis, originally operating five days a week from 9:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., is now open seven days a week with the same hours. Novack Cafe is now also open seven nights a week.

Some students expressed dissatisfaction with the current dining hours. Joon Ho Baak ’15, a member of the club volleyball team, said his practices usually end too late for him to purchase dinner at ’53 Commons. Baak switched from the SmartChoice20 plan to the SmartChoice5 because he found 20 meal swipes a week to be excessive.

“I switched because of the inflexibility of getting the food I wanted because the meal exchange rates are pretty terrible,” Baak said. “Just about everyone I know switched.”

Juan Nicholls ’15 said the dining hall hours were “strange,” and that he was unhappy that only one meal swipe can be used per meal period. However, he stayed on the SmartChoice20 plan because he felt it was still a more valuable option.

“Even though it’s more expensive, you’re still getting 60 more meals a term than the [SmartChoice14] plan,” Nicholls said. “The difference in DBA isn’t worth the difference in meals.“

None of the other Ivy League schools offer exclusively a la carte dining options, as Dartmouth did this prior academic year, according to their respective websites. Instead, students’ choices come in the form of plans that offer a fixed amount of meals per week, which do not roll over, or plans that allow students to use a fixed amount of meals at any point during the semester.

Among Ivy League schools, Cornell University has the most expensive on-campus meal plan, according to its website. The Golden Bear plan, which costs $6,220 a year for two semesters, allows students unlimited access to all-you-can-eat dining halls during regular hours and $400 of Big Red Bucks, Cornell’s equivalent of DBA. Cornell’s smallest meal plan, the Bear Basic, costs $4,270 a year and allows students to eat seven meals a week at dining halls, with $500 in Big Red Bucks. All of Cornell’s plans include four “bonus meals,” which can be used to purchase food for guests of students, according to the Cornell University Dining website.

Many institutions, like Dartmouth, currently require freshmen to purchase a set meal plan. These meal plans typically cost more than other meal plans offered exclusively to upperclassmen. At Columbia University, freshmen purchase one of two meal plans that differ in the amount of meals per week and dining dollars they offer, but both cost $4,588 a year, according to its website. Upperclassmen can purchase plans varying from $1,908 to $4,200 a year. At Columbia, Dining Dollars, the equivalent of DBA, roll over from year to year until students graduate.

The University of Pennsylvania and Yale University also require freshmen to buy specific meal plans, according to their respective websites. Penn offers its freshmen a choice of three plans with varying amounts of meal swipes. The Eat Any Time plan offers unlimited meal swipes for the dining plan holder, while the Balanced Eating Naturally and Best Food Fit plans offer limited meal swipes that can be used at any point throughout the semester. Each of the three plans cost $4,287 per year and also include Dining Dollar$, which are funds that can be used at retail locations throughout Penn’s campus.

Yale’s freshman plan allows 21 meal swipes a week at all-you-can-eat dining halls, according to its website. It is also the most expensive of the required freshman meal plans, costing $5,500 a year. Yale’s meal plans are the most expensive of the Ivy League institutions — students may purchase the freshman meal plan or choose from two other plans, which cost $5,500 and $5,634 a year

Students presented with information about other schools’ meal plan costs said their opinion of the SmartChoice meal systems were not changed.

Sarah Alexander ’14 said that though the College’s meal plan may be cheaper in comparison to other schools, she still felt that it cost too much.

“I had so much money left over last year, like $800,” Alexander said. “I still had around $300 last term. I’m just frustrated by the fact that I’m not using all my money.”

Dartmouth offers students seven dining venues, three of which are traditional dining halls and four others that provide snacks, coffee and sandwiches. This is the smallest number of dining options offered in the Ivy League. Among institutions of similar size — such as Williams College and Amherst College with three and two formal dining areas, respectively — Dartmouth provides similar services.

Among the Ivy League, the number of dining facilities varies greatly. Cornell has the most, with over 30 locations, ten of which are traditional dining halls; Yale has 15 dining halls; Princeton has six dining halls; Harvard University has 14 dining halls and 13 retail locations; Columbia has 10 dining locations; Penn has four dining halls and five retail locations; and Brown has two dining halls and nine other locations, which vary from cafes to Topside-style “mini-marts,” according to their respective websites.

The new meal plans have proved to be unpopular among students, according to a survey conducted by Student Assembly from late October to early November. The survey was sent out via email to campus on Oct. 23 and was available for students to fill out until Nov. 11, according to an email sent out by the Assembly that accompanied the survey’s results.

About 53.3 percent of the student body, or 2,236 student, of the students who responded to the survey, 45 percent purchased the SmartChoice5 plan, 31 percent purchased the SmartChoice20 plan, 15 percent purchased the SmartChoice14 plan and nine percent purchased the off-campus plan. Of those who responded to the survey, 28 percent were members of the Class of 2015, which indicates that only three percent of survey respondents voluntarily purchased the SmartChoice20 plan.

The new layout of ’53 Commons proved relatively popular — 70 percent of students responded that they would rate it a six out of 10 or higher. The median response was a seven out of 10, according to the survey results. The food at ’53 Commons also received positive feedback — 69 percent of students rated the food at ’53 Commons a three or four out of five, with five percent giving the food a five out of five.

In contrast, the new meal plans received negative feedback from students — 86 percent of students rated the SmartChoice system as a five out of 10 or lower; the median response was a three out of 10. The changed operating hours of ’53 Commons and the Courtyard Cafe were also unpopular, with 69 percent of students responding that the new hours were worse, while only three percent said they were better than previous years.

This article appeared in print under the title "Meal plans cost less than other Ivies’."