A FARE Choice

Hello everyone!

I can’t believe I just finished my third week of high school. Honestly it seems like college is right around the corner at this point. I’ve got my Common App all set up and I’m working on applying to some colleges now. It’s actually super exciting!  It seems like just yesterday I was a high school freshman, but here I am!

Like a lot of things in my life, one of the things I first look at when choosing a college is how I can be safe there with my food allergies. I’m currently planning on living in college in a dorm room, which means I’ll be set up with a meal plan and won’t have my parents to make me dinner anymore. Since basically all of my meals will be eaten on the college campus, I need to know for sure that the place I choose has safe food options for me.

Luckily, FARE has just the thing. They have an entire group of pages dedicated to finding a college based on your personal allergy needs. This link directs you to their main college advice and help page, from which you can go to any of their services that they offer.

My favorite of these is the college search option. So far they have 61 schools in their college database, but they’re adding more. Once you go to the FARE college food allergy search option, you’re directed to a search bar where you can enter the college your interested in. I decided to look at the “all colleges” option and just pick a random one for the purpose of this post as an example.

Here, they provide basic information about the certain allergy-related features that this college provides. Green means that they adequately provide the listed feature, yellow means they do it to some degree, whereas red means they do not. If one were to click on the college, it would direct you to a separate page with 14 different criteria graded as they are above, as well as further information for each. There’s also a handy tool where you can compare different colleges and the features they offer!

I have to say, this is an excellent tool. Looking through it, it’s just a wealth of information. I do wish that they would add more colleges, because 61 is kind of low, but there’s always room to add more to the list. I most definitely plan on using this when searching for the right college, and I highly encourage any other college seekers with food allergies to do the same and take advantage of this excellent tool.

Until next time!

Gary