It's a dilemma that many students face sometime during their college years: You reach into your pocket and find out you have a five dollar bill, two singles and some loose change. You get out of class at 6:30 p.m. and need to grab a quick dinner. There's no way you can stand another Asian chicken wrap at the Boulevard or any other Aramark food, and you don't know where to go to get the most bang for your lack of buck. You know you can't get far on your one-sixteenth tank of gas, so you know it has to be someplace close, but you're not sure which fast food restaurant would best suit your needs. So I decided to suck it up, gain a few pounds and review the fine gourmet cuisine that is offered at the Waltham-area fast food joints.

I wanted to make sure that each place got equal treatment, so I ordered a value meal that included some form of chicken (preferably chicken strips and all with the honey mustard dipping sauce since that's the only one common to all four restaurants), fries, a drink and then a dessert. The restaurants were rated on quality of their desert, cleanliness and service, as well as their distance from 'Deis, the amount of meat in their chicken product and healthiness.

#4 Burger King (881 Moody Street)

Chicken quality: 1 cluck
Fat Factor: 1 heart attack (430 calories, 25 grams of fat, 29 grams of carbs)
Dessert Selection: 4 sweet-tooth
Level of fullness: 1 burp

Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Quickness: 1 roadrunner
Cleanliness: 4 Mr. Cleans
Direct Distance from Brandeis: 3 Schleps
Currents Perks: $5 off car wash at Quick and Clean with receipt
Biggest Competition in immediate area: Moody Street's finest.

Overall Experience: Since Burger King was the one place without a chicken strip meal, I ordered an 8-piece chicken nugget meal (which came with fries and a drink) and a Hershey's Sundae Pie for dessert. To get #4 on my list is really not any slight toward Burger King; there was some stiff competition.

The place is huge, the chicken/sauce combo is one of the relatively healthiest, the dessert was the best of any of the four and they accepted my MasterCard. Most importantly, the place was so clean that I was worried about slipping and sliding on the floor when I could see my reflection. All this food was slightly under budget and they gave me sauce without my asking for some. The biggest problems are that the chicken wasn't very good at all, and it wasn't all that filling.

It felt like it took forever after I paid to get my food, and it is more of a schlep than Wendy's or McDonalds. Overall, the king of burgers failed to come through with a chicken product that was satisfactory enough and fell to the fourth spot on this review.

#3 Kentucky Fried Chicken (501 Main Street)

Level of chicken product: 2 clucks
Fat Factor from chicken/sauce: 2 heart attacks (450 calories, 26 grams of fat, 29 grams of carbs)
Dessert Selection: 2 sweet-tooth
Level of fullness: 2 burps
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Quickness: 3 roadrunner
Cleanliness: 1 Mr. Cleans
Direct Distance from Brandeis: 4 Schleps
Currents Perks: None
Biggest Competition in immediate area: Wilson's Diner (it's not open for dinner, but any other meal it would win out)

Overall Experience: When I asked, "Do you have a meal which combines chicken strips, fries, and a drink."

The answer shocked me: "We don't have fries."
I almost fell over, but luckily I saw that they did have a combo meal with biscuits. So I got my combo meal with 3 "Colonel's Chicken Strips," cole slaw, mash potatoes and gravy, and a drink, and "Little Bucket Parfait" for dessert.

I was turned off a lot by KFC. The place was small and the dirtiest of any place I had visited. Do you need to have me sit in seats with chicken products sprinkled on them? The meal, although not what I was looking for, was actually pretty filling. KFC is the farthest from Brandeis of any of the places, which is not saying much because they're all less than 2 miles away. The biscuit may have been the best part of the meal; what a nice surprise! The service was fast and helpful, and the food was somewhat plentiful. If the place were bigger and cleaner, it may have been higher on my list, but unfortunately, it came it at third.

#2 McDonald's (789 Main Street)

Level of chicken product: 4 clucks
Fat Factor from chicken/sauce: 4 heart attacks(700 calories, 35 grams of fat, 59 grams of carbs)
Dessert Selection: 3 sweet-tooth
Level of fullness: 4 burps
Accepts Credit Cards: No
Quickness: 2 roadrunners
Cleanliness: 2 Mr. Cleans
Direct Distance from Brandeis: 1 Schleps
Currents Perks: Monopoly Game (I won so much stuff-a McFlurry, small soft drink, a Best Buy buck, and a breakfast biscuit by just buying my meal)
Biggest Competition in immediate area: Wendy's

Overall Experience: McDonald's came very, very close to first, but there was one incident that scarred my entire visit. I was going to pay and I asked if I could use a credit card, but the guy couldn't figure out what I was asking. Then I decided to try a little espaSol and asked if they took a tarjeta de crdito.

Finally, I just got frustrated and whipped out my MasterCard to find out they don't accept it. Not just that card; they don't accept any credit cards. McDonalds is one of the largest signs of America's dominance in the world of globalization, but they are definitely not "everywhere you want to be."

I mean, how could they not accept credit cards? Whatever, I paid with cash. I bought a 5-piece "Chicken Selects" meal (which comes with fries and a drink) and a fudge sundae. The chicken strips were excellent. The food overall was the most filling of any I had tried, so much so that I just gave my sundae to my friend saying, "my belly is going to burst, I have truly been 'Super Sized'."

#1 Wendy's (806 Main Street)

Level of chicken product: 3 clucks
Fat Factor from chicken/sauce: 3 heart attacks (570 calories, 33 grams of fat, 39 grams of carbs)
Dessert Selection: 1 sweet-tooth
Level of fullness: 3 burps
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Quickness: 4 Speedy roadrunners
Cleanliness: 2 Mr. Cleans
Direct Distance from Brandeis: 1 Schleps
Currents Perks: $1 donation gets you coupons for 10 free "Junior Frosty"s
Biggest Competition in immediate area: McDonalds

Overall Experience: I ordered a "Home-style Chicken Meal" (3 strips, fries and a drink) and a Large Frosty, and since I had money to burn, I got suckered into Biggie-sizing for $.49 more.

If Wendy's added another chicken strip to this meal, if the chicken strips were a little less of a weight gainer, or if the dessert were a little better (I use a Large Frosty to describe to people what feeling "bloated and like puke" is like), Wendy's would have run away with this review. As it was, it squeezed out the #1 spot past McDonalds because of the aforementioned credit card incident. Wendy's was the quickest place to go and the cheapness of the food allowed me to increase the size of my fries and the drink into ginormous (a combination of gigantic and enormous) portions. The service was very good and surprisingly courteous, and the sauces for the chicken strips were the most interesting selection. The chicken is very good, but somehow didn't compare with McDonald's. But the fact that the combination of sauce and chicken at McDonalds has 20 grams more carbs than Wendy's is both scary and disgusting (with a side of checking myself in the mirror afterward to see if I had grown a "chicken belly"). Therefore, if I had to choose one of these fast-food joints to grab a quick chicken meal at, I would go with the gourmet selection at Wendy's. Until next time, eat well Brandeis.