75 best American colleges for food

Nobody ever said that college was easy. With tests, book lists, and seemingly endless assignments, college students are under a whole lot of stress. Sometimes all that’s needed at the end of a long day is a good meal, but unfortunately, they can’t always get it. Let’s face it: College dining halls are typically not culinary havens. Thankfully, though, there are more than a few colleges across the country that go above and beyond when it comes to their dining services. From schools that have their own vegetable gardens to ones that host chef demonstrations and serve only food that’s made in small batches from scratch, we’ve tracked down the 75 best colleges for food in America.

This is our fourth annual ranking of the best colleges for food. Over the years, the list expanded from 52 colleges in 2012 to 60 colleges in 2013 to 75 colleges in 2014. To assemble our ranking, we started out with a full list of roughly 2,000 colleges, and after rigorous research and outreach to their dining services, we narrowed that list down to about 300 contenders. These standout colleges were highly respected for a variety of reasons across the country, and had dining programs that caught our attention. After that, we ranked the final 75 by scoring each of those colleges on the below criteria:

Nutrition and Sustainability: The college makes consistent efforts to ensure that its food is well-balanced as well as tasty, and is healthy not just for the students, but for the environment as well.

Accessibility and Service: The college accommodates all dietary preferences, has a variety of options for students to choose from, and makes sure that the dining options are conveniently located near students’ dorms. Dining program has on-campus eateries that are open late at night, and meal plans let students purchase off-campus food.

Education and Events: The college offers nutrition and culinary education to every student on campus and holds food-centered events to foster community and break the monotony of the dining experience.

Surrounding Area: Students have access to exciting and vast food options in the area surrounding the college and can access it easily. We compiled information from Yelp to grade colleges on the quality and accessibility of all the food around campuses within a five-mile radius.

The “X” Factor: These are the little extras that made our jaws drop and prove that these colleges really go above and beyond and get genuinely creative.

Even though the actual quality of the food was extremely important in our ranking, the overall dining experience, including the surrounding area, is what really determined which colleges made the cut and which didn’t. Surprisingly, it wasn’t only the Ivy League schools that came out on top; smaller colleges often had better programs that could cater to each and every student’s need due to their lower population.

The nine newcomers this year include the University of South Carolina, which uses no frozen foods and has nine certified executive chefs on campus; Rhode Island School of Design, which builds recipes around seasonal ingredients and offers pizza delivery until 12:30 a.m.; and Georgia Tech, which has a completely sustainable food program and recently rebranded its dining halls as “community restaurants.” Other first-time inductees include UNC Chapel Hill, the University of Southern California, Ball State, Northeastern, Duquesne, and Tulane.

The Northeast has the most colleges on our list, with 26, followed by the West and South, with 16 schools each. 10 schools from the Midwest made the cut, and seven are in the Mid-Atlantic. Health-conscious California has more ranked schools than any other state, with 15; followed by Massachusetts with seven; New York and Pennsylvania with five schools each; and Connecticut, Georgia, and Maine with four schools each. One more Southern school made the cut this year than last year, along with one additional Northeastern school, two fewer Mid-Atlantic schools, and one fewer Midwestern school. The amount of Western schools on the list remained the same.

The schools on our list really make an effort to ensure that students are well-fed with healthy, sustainable food in unique preparations. Schools including UC San Diego, Tulane, University of Washington, and NYU have food trucks stationed on campus daily; Yale, University of Washington, Purdue, Dickinson, Stanford, and Mills boast on-campus farms; Bates, UCLA, and Northeastern all have dining halls that have been Certified Green by the Green Restaurant Association; and schools including Johns Hopkins, Tulane, Purdue, Northeastern, and Columbia host regular chef cooking demonstrations and classes.

Students across the country are becoming more mature in their tastes and more demanding in what they expect of their higher education dining experience. They want their food to taste great, to be fun, and to be sustainable, and these colleges are stepping up to the challenge.