Last week, I covered the best dining halls to eat at. This week, I will cover the important stuff. Where to get your snacks.

In this post, I will cover a few different common shopping locations for Penn State students. These will include the Penn State food service stores, Mclanahans, Target and Amazon. At these stores I compared the prices of some college essentials: a box of Cheerios, a tube of Crest toothpaste, Nyquil, Oreos, Nature Valley granola bars, Clif bars, and Chobani yogurt.

On the left: The raw costs of each time at each place. Parentheses represent buying packs or boxes of the item.

On the right: The cost of buying one of each product at each store.

While the chart on the right does a good showing the price of buying one of each product, this unevenly weighs some of the products that have very low prices, such as one nature valley granola bar or one Nyquil capsule. While expensive products like Oreos or Cheerios are weighed much more heavily.

These charts normalize the average prices of each product. Essentially, all the prices are scaled so the average price of each product is 100. So, any product less than 100 is below the average price between all of the stores and any price above 100 is above the average price. As you can see, the lowest “price” (the lowest number in each row) varies by product. No single store has the lowest price for everything. But, when you add up all the normalized prices, Target emerges as the cheapest place to shop.

This chart shows the average normalized price for each store. 100 is average, below is cheaper and above is more expensive. As you can see, on average, Target is the cheapest, followed closely by Amazon, and Mclanahans, with the Penn State food stores lagging.

However, price is only one aspect of shopping. The shopping experience at each location has different strengths and weaknesses, summarized below.

PSU Store Strengths: Extremely convenient location. Fastest  way to get something. Can spend your parents money (Meal points)

PSU Store Weaknesses: Most expensive. Cramped Stores.

Mclanahans Strengths: Pretty good variety. Closer than Target. Reasonable prices.

Mclanahans Weaknesses: None of their strengths are that strong.

Target Strengths: Cheapest. Very pleasant shopping experience. Large selection.

Target Weaknesses: Furthest away from dorms.

Amazon Strengths: Can order from anywhere. Large Selection.

Amazon Weaknesses: Takes a few says to ship. Can’t order fresh/refrigerated/frozen foods.

In summary, the PSU stores are the fastest way to get snacks. Amazon is the best option if you don’t want to leave your dorm. Mclanahans is suitable if you want average prices without walking to Target or if you want Crest toothpaste. All around,Target is the best option if you want cheap prices a wide variety of options and a great shopping experience.