Dining on Campus 101

Living in the dorms as a first year student dining on campus will become routine, but it doesn’t have to be a boring repetition of bland meals two or three times a day. With a few tips, you can learn how to make the most from dining on campus without spending all your meal points in the first semester.

Meal points are the primary currency at the dining halls on campus. You can use meal points at any dining hall, including the restaurants at the Hub! At the Hub, you have options like Chick-fil-a, Sbarro (an Italian place with pizza and pasta), Panda Express, Burger King, and more! The Hub can be very crowded at lunch time, so if you only have a half hour between classes, consider a quicker option, like getting lunch at the nearest dining hall.

***Be Careful: At the Hub, you don’t get the same discount you get at the dining halls, so eating at the Hub can be expensive.

Another great tip is that you can monitor how many meal points you have. You can do this by logging into eliving.psu.edu to ensure you aren’t spending more than you have budgeted. You can also change your meal plan level. If you feel you have to much you can drop into a lower level meal plan or if you don’t have enough money you can always increase your level meal plan. You can get a full refund of any meal points you haven’t spent as long as you remember to change your meal plan level on the eliving website.

All dining halls give a student discount, making it much cheaper than the HUB restaurants. Each set of resident halls have a few different places within the commons area that you can choose from. Be sure to check the hours for each one! Some open starting at lunch during the weekdays and on weekends breakfast in the dining halls doesn’t open until 10:30.  

***Helpful hint: Download the Dining@PSU app to access the menus for all the dining halls on campus, as well as the hours for each place

Using your menu app, you can always know what’s being served at every dining hall up to a week before. It can be monotonous to visit the same dining hall, so checking the menu and frequenting other places can help change up the routine.

By: Alex Sims