Not only are there more college students than in the past, students also have more sophisticated palates than their parents did. Colleges can't get by offering mystery meat seven nights a week -- students expect and are getting access to sushi bars, vegan options, a la carte meals, takeout meals and the like.

Many colleges offer a confusing array of meals and dining points, which you can exchange for meals or a la carte items, such as a slice of pizza or a cup of coffee. Usually, the more meals you buy, the fewer points or dining dollars you get. Many incoming freshman are left scratching their heads over the options available, wondering how they can possibly know if they will want to eat breakfast every day next February or not.

Start with the most expensive
Cohen recommends choosing the most expansive plan and cutting back from there. "It's easier to move down to a plan with less food and plan on spending more from the outset on the more expensive plan," he says. Most colleges will let you adjust your plan mid-term, but if you have points or meals left over at the end of the year, you usually lose them.

Clark found a plan with more dining dollars or points than meals offered her the most flexibility. "Points are great because they're more flexible and you don't always have time to go to the dining hall," she says.

"However, you definitely want to get a plan with enough meals so that you can go there with friends. The dining hall is a great way to stock up on essential produce that will be more expensive if you try to buy it with your points and is most likely fresher in the dining hall than in the cafes around campus that may take points."

Eating off-campus
If you are in an urban or small-city campus that is within walking distance of noncampus-affiliated restaurants and cafes, you may want to sign up for one of the off-campus meal plans that are popping up around the country. These plans are similar to on-campus meal plans in that you can sign up for a certain number of meals or points toward meals off-campus and get those loaded onto your college ID or onto a separate card.

"An off-campus meal plan makes sense for the student who is likely to eat a lot of meals off-campus and it makes the parents happy because they have some control over what is spent and what it is spent on," says Mike Hauke, president of Off-Campus Meal Plans, a company that provides off-campus meal plans in more than 50 college areas around the country. By using a combination of on-campus and off-campus meal plans, students and their parents can more easily budget for food and meal expenses.