I’d switch out the dresser and the desk in that CMU room so the desk looks out the window 
UW dorms built in 1940 and beyond until recently (the 2000’s) or before then have closets that stuck out from the rectangle that was the room. So many different room styles! The 1960’s mirror image split down the middle concrete block ones with bolsters- revamped now with movable furniture. My favorite story is that one dorm which was for women before things went coed in the 1970’s, was named for some campus bigwig who did NOT want women on campus in the late 1800’s! They tore down the original building and put up a high rise with three wings.
I’d try turning the dresser 90 degrees to the wall and see if it can fit next to the desk, wardrobe, or foot of the bed while still having access to the drawers.
Wondering if the OP spoke to the disabilities office and got a piece of furniture removed.
OP seems to have vanished.
In this case, no. It’s just a room.
Probably varies by college as well as for new vs. returning students. For my own college, other than requesting the number of roommates you would like, incoming students have no voice in room selection.
Wow, @Massmom, what Wellesley dorm was that?
Interesting. Which dorms out of curiosity.
I didn’t think even the most institutional looking dorms like North or Dascomb were bad enough to be “from the gulag”.
If that was the case, a few older dorms friends lived in at NYU would be much more deserving of that title.
Yes, but it’s still fun talking about dorm rooms we have known.
And not all of them are the size of handkerchiefs. As a sophomore at the University of Maryland, my son had a dorm single so big that he would park his bike in it instead of putting it in the bike room. And even with the bike in the room, plus a big desk chair he bought at Staples, it didn’t seem crowded. (Messy, yes. Crowded, no.)
Sometimes you just get lucky.
@Consolation , it was Dower House, the smallest and oldest dorm on campus. It is on the east side, right across from the Admissions Office! They had a drainage issue in the heating system that took months to fix. The pit they dug to investigate steamed, but fortunately, did not stink.
@cobrat , Barrows his first year and Burton his second. I can’t remember where he’ll be this upcoming year. Barrows was the worst of the two, but he had plenty of space.
I think crappy housing is character building for my spoiled millennial children, so I’m not complaining.
In no way would I defend those over-the-top rooms at Ole Miss, but I have to wonder if they derived from the fact that the rooms at Ole Miss are woefully under furnished. The “dresser” is only 30" tall (nightstand size) the desk doesn’t have drawers, the closet is a rod with a shelf over it that’s built into the room (not recessed or covered by a door), there’s no bookcase or hutch over the desk or any place to actually put a book. The bathroom is private, but there’s just a sink (not a vanity with drawers), toilet, and shower. Not even a shower curtain is provided. It’s like they’re inviting you to fill the room with your own stuff. We’re actually having to buy furniture for our daughter’s room.
That is the truth. My D once had a triple that was two large rooms with a closet again as large as a comfortable single room. It had five windows with window seats and a spectacular view.
Sometimes you don’t get lucky.
My son last year had a small, traditional double room with furniture that was too large of scale, and a roommate who brought, in addition to the mini fridge/microwave, a full-size water cooler and the stock for his online business. That room was an absolute hot mess.
My son’s senior single at Tufts was huge. Big enough that he dragged another twin bed into it. It was an older building maybe from the 1930s.
My sophomore year I was in a room that was probably originally the servant’s room of the original suite. It was so narrow that you couldn’t put a desk in it. I bought a sewing table and put the desk they issued me out in the living room area of the suite where as I recall it housed the stereo and the coffee maker. You also couldn’t open the closet door because the bed would have blocked it so someone had removed it. It was a terrible room, but l had great roommates.
@Massmomm , I was confused, because AFAIK Tower Court is the oldest dorm on campus. Dower House was not a built as a dorm, and wasn’t one when I was there. They converted a number of buildings to dorms since 1975 to accommodate the increase in the student body. The “real” dorms were the Hazard Quadrangle (Beebe, Caz, Pom, and Shafer), the Tower Court complex (Tower, Claflin, and Severance), Stone/Davis, the “new” dorms (Freeman, Bates, and McAfee), and Munger, originally the dorm for scholarship students, supposedly. (Although I note they don’t say that now. B-) ) Everything else has been converted to student housing since then.
When I was there, the overall norm was that freshmen had doubles, and most people had singles thereafter. There were exceptions, of course.
UMiami’s best under grad student room = the one the RA is using. You get a double room to yourself… I was in heaven with a king bed and double closets and double dressers for two years, plus they were paying me to live there! I had bought a small TV and cube fridge second-hand and life was good.
Interesting. I didn’t think either of those dorms were that bad.
Then again, I was coming from the perspective of living in some pretty cramped/spartan apartments while growing up…though still far better than what my parents…especially my father experienced in parts of his childhood/adolescence(Was on completely his own from 12-13 onwards) and college(6-8 students crammed into a room the size of a small American double with dorm food so bad even US military issued C-Rations sent to the ROC as part of US supplied military aid he had during his mandatory period of military service in the mid-'50s was culinary bliss in comparison).
Heck, the Oberlin dorms and later, some dorms I visited/stayed at at Harvard(summer school) were almost like well-furnished hotels from my perspective…especially compared with some apartments I grew up in or the first few post-college apartments I lived in.
@blossom a window AC?? What dorm allows that?
No dorm, that’s my point. People hauling in all sorts of major appliances, furniture, knick-knacks, big screen tv’s with no concept whatsoever of communal living, sharing space, an electrical grid which may or may not be as up to date as what you have at home, etc. And then complaining that once the fridge, microwave, Keurig and easy chair have been placed in the room there is no place to walk or set down your books. Duh.
Still find any mention of bringing TVs to dorms to be amusing…especially considering this very issue sparked a heated argument between me and an older aunt ~2 decades ago because she felt having a TV was a “necessity” in a dorm and I disagreed.
And after 4 years, didn’t even notice the absence of a TV. Heck, I was able to cope without a TV for 5 years after college.
Most younger folk seem to stream their tv/video/movie watching on their computers these days.