This Sunday, thousands of kids will dress up like princesses, pirates and animals and take to the streets to score pillowcases full of candy. Then, they will dump the candy onto the kitchen table and take inventory. If you’ve ever trick-or-treated before, this is a familiar scene.

“”We’d dump all of the candy out on the floor and swap it back and forth,”” said pre-architecture freshman Kaitlyn Fillmore. “”We always gave the stuff we didn’t like to my mom.””

Unfortunately, a pillowcase without any cheap, undesirable candy is a rare thing. The real challenge is how to get rid of it.

“”I didn’t like mint stuff,”” said undeclared freshman Rico Tapusoa. “”I threw the stuff I didn’t like at people.””

Physiology sophomore Sarah Batterton despises Dots.

“”I always got really mad when I found those,”” said Batterton. “”I hated those little boxes of Dots.””

Romie Buttel, a pre-law freshman, sorts his candy carefully before separating the bad from the good.

“”I separated my candy by color,”” said Buttel. “”I put the reds with the reds and the blues with the blues. It looked really cool.””

Buttel’s candy haul two years ago didn’t need color to make it “”cool.””

“”Two Halloweens ago, I went trick-or-treating with some friends, but we drove,”” said Buttel. “”In one neighborhood, everyone just left buckets of king-size candy bars by their doors. We took everything.””

The trick-or-treating experience is definitely enhanced when you’re not dealing with stingy candy providers, but a good costume can also make or break the evening.

“”One year, I went trick-or-treating with a friend who dressed up like a juice box,”” said Fillmore. “”I was a vampire. People kept calling us the bad guy and the juice box.””

Valerie Phillips, a media arts freshman, took the importance of candy on Halloween to a whole new level one year.

“”I dressed up like a gumball machine,”” said Phillips. “”That was fun.””

For all the hype surrounding candy and the solemnity in which many kids sort and trade it, there’s way more sugar at this time of year than any person can eat.

“”After my parents checked to make sure it wasn’t tampered with, I ate my favorites,”” said Batterton. “”I never went through all of my Halloween candy.””  

Instead, most of us just pile chocolate Santas and candy hearts on top of stale, uneaten candy corn.