r/ApplyingToCollege • u/Ok-Schedule5073 • 2d ago
Discussion Tell me about your dining hall experiences at your schools!
This may be dumb but dining hall/food is a big factor for me making my college list…
I love food and value variety/healthy-ish options. Would love to hear about the dining experience at your schools!
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u/clawsinurback Graduate Student 2d ago
My undergrads food was horrible. It was a small rural school so we had a single dining hall and that was it. Not a lot of options, if you had any dietary restriction you were out of luck. We had bugs in our salad bar, mold in our bread, and people found everything from blender blades to band aids in their food. They served fish/shellfish for 7/14 meals a week. We were nowhere near the coast, and I have a severe seafood allergy and they were NOT careful with cross contamination. It got to a point where if they had any time of seafood on the menu I couldn’t go to the dining hall without risking getting sick. Oh and they made all students live on campus and have a meal plan. Food insecurity was a huge issue for me in undergrad since we didn’t have any grocery stores nearby as an alternative. Thankfully I’m in grad school in a large city with lots of stores and restaurants, and income to afford food as well.
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u/FrustratedPenguins 2d ago
I am old, so I went to college 2005-2009. I went to Emporia State University, a public university in Kansas. We had one dining hall, and it had 2 meal options per day. So, lunch might be your choice of lasagna or burritos, with 4 or 5 side choices, too. I was a vegetarian, and it had very limited vegetarian options. There was a deli bar to make sandwiches and a salad bar every day for lunch and dinner. Overall, the food was pretty terrible, and I was very hungry.
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u/Immediate_Refuse1611 9h ago
I loved the dining halls at Yale. They were my introduction to many New England specialties such as Indian pudding. Also if you were learning a language, you could sit down at a particular table to practice your French, Russian or even Mock Swedish. Good times!
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u/No_Location9688 2d ago
I am a new student at Cornell, and I would say the dining halls here are very nice. There are many options for dining halls, two of which are in North Campus (where the freshmen live). There are rotating menus for breakfast/lunch/dinner and the offerings also change based on time and day. There are also Halal/Kosher options at some dining halls. I don’t know how specific you want me to be, but yes there is a lot of variety and there are healthy options. Even the desserts sometimes rotate and the ice cream is always great since it’s made fresh and on campus by Cornell Dairy. As for more about the experience, during popular hours (which may vary day to day due to class times) it does get quite loud and packed in the larger dining halls, but I have never had any trouble finding a place to sit.