Ultimate Guide to Georgia Tech Meal Plans

Are you overwhelmed by Georgia Tech’s many meal plan options? Unsure which plan suits your needs and budget? From registering for classes to finding housing, planning for the school year can be stressful. 

Read next: 5 Benefits of Living Off Campus Georgia Tech

In this guide, we’ll break down the various meal plan options, explain their benefits and limitations, and help you choose the best one for your needs.

Meal Plans at GT: Which meal plan is right for me?

Georgia Tech offers a variety of meal plan options to suit the varying needs of the student body. Meal plans can include meal swipes, dining dollars and Buzzcard funds, all loaded onto your Student ID (Buzzcard). 

Meal Swipes

Meal swipes are what you think of when you think of a traditional college meal plan. Meal swipes are used at any of the three all-you-can-eat dining halls on campus (Brittain, North Avenue and West Village). 

Dining Dollars

Dining dollars are included in some meal plans but can also be purchased in packages of $50, $100, $200, $400 and $600. They can be used at Tech Dining locations and are sales tax exempt. Dining dollars roll over from Summer to Fall semester and from Fall to Spring semester, but are forfeited at the end of Spring semester, so be sure to use them all up before the end of the school year! 

Buzzcard Funds

Buzzcard funds on the other hand never expire and can be used at over 200 locations on- and off-campus. From on-campus printing services to the Moes in Tech Square, Buzzcard funds are designed to give you easy access to important services on-campus and encourage purchases at both on- and off-campus merchant locations like the bookstore. Many meal plans will come with a small allotment of Buzzcard funds and more can be added to your Buzzcard at any time through the housing portal. 

The first step in deciding which meal plan is right for you is figuring out which of the meal plan options are applicable to your academic year and semester at GT.  

Some options are only available to upperclassmen while others are designed specifically for first years. See the categories below to determine which meal plan options are available for you.  

First Year Meal Plan Options 

If you’re a freshman at GT and living on campus, you are required to purchase a meal plan for the Fall and Spring semesters. You can choose from three meal plan options specifically designed for freshmen or one of the five Dining Dollar packages available to all students, all semesters. 

For the summer semester you are not required to purchase a meal plan and can choose from one of the five Dining Dollar packages. 

For a breakdown of each of these options, click the linked text. 

Fall and Spring Semester 

• Greek 100
• First Year Flex 
• First Year Everyday Unlimited 
• Dining Dollars ($50, $100, $200, $400 or $600)

Summer Semester (not iGnite)

• Dining Dollars ($50, $100, $200, $400 or $600)

Upperclassmen Meal Plan Options 

Upperclassmen are not required to purchase a meal plan regardless of whether or not they live in on campus housing. 

During Fall and Spring semesters, they can choose between one of two meal plan options for upperclassmen, a set of 200 meal swipes, and one of five dining dollar packages available to all students, all semesters. 

For the Summer semester, upperclassmen can choose between one of four meal swipe packages or one of the five dining dollar packages. 

Fall and Spring Semester 

• Voluntary Flex 
• Voluntary Everyday 
• Meal Pass 200 
• Dining Dollars ($50, $100, $200, $400 or $600)

Summer Semester 

• Meal Pass (50, 100, 150 or 200)  
• Dining Dollars ($50, $100, $200, $400 or $600)

Meal Plan Breakdowns

Next step is determining which of the applicable meal plans is the best choice for you. This section breaks down each of the meal plan options listed above with a description of what each option includes.

It can be helpful to have the Georgia Tech Dining Meal Plan Options Chart open to reference when reading the description for each. 

This chart will allow you to filter down your options to what year you are and what semester you’ll be needing the meal plan for so you can make a side by side comparison of each meal plan while reading the descriptions. 

Greek 100

The Greek 100 meal plan is designed for first year students who have purchased an on-campus meal plan option due to the first-year on campus requirement, but have since joined Greek life and are transitioning to the Greek life meal plan. 

When you join a Greek life organization, most fraternities and sororities will require their members purchase their chapter meal plan. To help first-year students who have already purchased the meal plan, the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life has partnered with GT Dining to create the Greek 100 plan, which is a smaller meal plan so the student can afford to meet both the first-year student meal plan requirement and the greek organization meal plan requirement. 

The Greek 100 meal plan comes with 100 meal swipes, $250 Buzzcard funds, and $100 dining dollars and a lower price. Since this meal plan is a lower price than the original meal plan the student has signed up to pay, “a prorated refund for the larger meal plan already paid for will be issued to the student’s account following the switch.”

For more information on the Greek 100 meal plan and transitioning to your organization’s meal plan, please visit the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life Greek Meal Plans page. 

Flex and Unlimited Meal Plans

The Flex and Unlimited meal plan options offer 4 different plans: The First Year Flex, Voluntary Flex, First Year Everyday Unlimited and Voluntary Everyday, which are all priced the same at $2977. All of these plans include both meal swipes and dining dollars. 

The difference between the First Year Flex and the Voluntary Flex is class distinction (whether you’re a freshman or an upperclassmen). For simplicity, we will refer to both of these generally as the Flex meal plan. The same applies for the First Year Everyday Unlimited and the Voluntary Unlimited which we will refer to as the Unlimited meal plan. 

Since the total cost of both the Flex and the Unlimited meal plans are the same, the difference is how the dining dollars and meal swipes are allocated. 

In the Flex meal plan, you are allotted less swipes per week, but more total Dining Dollars ($812). This plan is good for someone who might not want to eat in the dining halls on the weekends and would rather use dining dollars at Tech Dining locations that are not the dining halls. 

The Unlimited meal plan features unlimited meal swipes at dining halls, all days of the week, but less total dining dollars for the semester ($250). The unlimited meal plan also includes five guest passes for the GT Dining halls per semester while the Flex meal plan includes 0. This meal plan is good for someone who plans to eat at the dining halls on the weekends and only occasionally use their dining dollars at other campus locations. 

Meal Pass Packages 

Meal passes are a set of meal swipes accompanied by an allotted amount of dining dollars and Buzzcard funds. Here is the breakdown of each meal pass with their allotted meal swipes, dining dollars and total cost: 

• Meal Pass 200: Includes 200 meal swipes per semester, $200 Dining Dollars and $50 BuzzCard Funds. Total cost is $2415.
• Meal Pass 150:  Includes 150 meal swipes per semester, $150 Dining Dollars and $50 BuzzCard Funds. Total cost is $1778.
• Meal Pass 100:  Includes 100 meal swipes per semester, $100 Dining Dollars and $50 BuzzCard Funds. Total cost is $1252.
• Meal Pass 50:  Includes 50 meal swipes per semester. Total cost is $553.

Dining Dollar Packages 

As explained previously, dining dollars are sales tax exempt and can be used at all Tech Dining locations. The package comes with $50, $100, $200, $400 or $600 depending on the package you chose and are priced $100, $200, $400 and $600 respectively. There are no Buzzcard funds or meal passes included, but there is a $40 dining dollar bonus when you purchase the Dining Dollar $400 package and a $60 dining dollar bonus when you purchase the Dining Dollar $600. 

This table organizes the key details about each dining dollar package for easy comparison.

Meal Plan Breakdowns

We hope this guide has given you a better understanding of the various meal plan options available to Georgia Tech students. For up to date pricing information on each of these options, please see the Georgia Tech Dining Meal Plan page where you can find pricing and Frequently Asked Questions on each of these options. 

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about living off campus with your own kitchen at Rambler, visit our website and don’t hesitate to reach out to our leasing team!