Everyone knows college life can get expensive. From textbooks and rent to nights out and necessities, things can add up fairly quickly.

In order to find some of the best deals, we picked five grocery items that you might find in any apartment, house or dorm room and compared local grocery stores to find the best prices. For our purposes, we went for quantity over quality, because in the life of a college student, every cent counts.

The local stores we chose were Big Star, Hometown Market, Food World, Foodland, ALDI and Wal-Mart.

What we found may surprise you. What was the cheapest?

Well, it wasn’t Wal-Mart.

Note: the specific brands pictured may not be pictures of the cheapest.