on some campuses, to live on residence it is required that you purchase a meal plan in order to stay on campus.
The meals plans are not cheap, they range anywhere from $2,000-$5,000. If you do not use the meals/money up by the end of the year, the money or meals are lost, there is no refund. The residences claim, that they are mandatory to ensure" that all students eat healthy", but that is bull.

The food they provide at the cafeteria, is in no way healthy, except for maybe the salads, and after eating it you usually feel sick, and sometimes you even get sick!

So my point is that residences should not have mandatory meal plans, they should have optional meal plans, which you can purchase if you want to "eat healthy" and just throw your money away.

with my school
I went with the cheapest meal plan which was $2, 700, and allowed me 250 meals and $500 flex dollars.

The meals had to be used at the caf right outside the residence, but the flex dollars could be used to purchase food in other places around campus. Such as Tim Hortons, Pita Pit, and other cafeterias around the school.

I'm not sure if there is much vegetarian food, my advice to you is to do your research, and see what kinds of food the cafeteria at your school offers, they may have an online menu.

Most people, myself included will not end up using all of the meals up, so the money is just wasted.
it is probably a smart idea to go with the cheapest meal plan they offer.
At most schools if you use the meal plan up, you can always purchase more meals/flex dollars.
again I would check with the school.

hope this helps

The entire concept of a meal plan if just a scheme for school to make some more cash. I think it's stupid that you are forced to eat what they tell you instead of making a trip to a grocery store. It's hard enough to pay for tuition, books and a place to stay; do they have to add on top of all that?

I agree that the whole mandatory meal plan is really just a cash grab for schools. However, I understand where they're coming from. By eating healthy I think they mainly just mean eating in general. Students are usually pretty low on money and I know I personally hate buying food because it feels like such a waste of cash. So I guess in that sense it's a good idea but I do think we are old enough to handle that situation ourselves.

"Traditional style" residences are not designed to have kitchen facilities available for everyone to cook most of their meals for themselves. They do have *some* facilities, but they are meant to prepare snacks or the odd meal. The residence I lived in in first year had one small kitchen (as in, probably smaller than the kitchen in your house, in line with the size in many apartments) in the building, for 90 people. The residence in 2nd year had microwaves and a sink on every floor, but not a single stove/oven in the building (of around 200 people). Oh, and a couple people never did their dishes so the sink was constantly full of dirty dishes. I imagine about the best ratio in a traditional style residence would be one "kitchen" for 20-30 people or so (which could be small kitchens throughout the building or one big room with multiple appliances).

Can you imagine if even half of people weren't relying on meal plan when there is one stove for 30 people? Quite frankly I'm glad that when I lived off campus I mostly shared cooking with my roomates so it wasn't 5 of us individually trying to prepare meals.

If you want to live in residence and not pay for a meal plan, in all instances that I'm aware of the apartment style residences (i.e. ones that have a kitchen in a unit shared by 2-5 people or so) have completely optional meal plans. Unfortunately that's not an option at all schools, but it is at most.

If you have really severe dietary restrictions, and I'm thinking some combination of things, like you're vegan and can't eat wheat, it *may* be possible to get permission to not have the meal plan.

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What schools are you guys looking at where the lowest is $2000 and they only have one caf? Of all the schools I applied to the HIGHEST was $2500.
I think mandatory meal plans in Rez is a good idea, as it guarantees that you have food for most of the year while your at school. To me that's one less worry, and I've been to a few of the universities in Ontario for overnight trips, and all of the food has been good.

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UWO '12 Social Science

living in rez is expensive, my only advice is to get the cheapest possible meal plan then make friends in the city who wouldn't mind having you over for supper pretty often

Waterloo lets you transfer the funds to the next year.
Ryerson does not.

Recommendation? Use up your funds and give to the homeless.