@Consolation yes, Dower was built as a barn in the 1860s. It’s the oldest building on campus (or among them) but wasn’t used as a dorm until the mid or late 70s. It was disused for a long period prior to that. Dower can best be described as a barracks, but my D loved it. The rooms were 3-room suites, with two shared bedrooms flanking a study. Having the desks in the middle room really made the bedrooms less crowded and a lot more restful. And the floors were wood, so they could be cleaned better than the nasty carpets in the hallways.
Tower Court is lovely, at least the public rooms I saw! That’s the place I would have chosen to live!
I thought about this thread when D20 moved into her new college double room this weekend. The room is a good size but seems kind of under furnished. There are two beds, two desks two three drawer dressers (that fit under the beds) and two small closets with hanging bars. Not a single shelf or other storage place in the room or in the closets. It seems really odd not to have at least bookshelves given the amount of space they have. It may be the kind of school where people show up with moving vans (her roommate didn’t). We will see.
@doschicos, agree that she is lucky about the room size (the ceilings are really high too.) It just seems odd that the school doesn’t seem to expect them to have books! Last year (different college) she was in a quad with four of everything: beds, desks/chairs, six shelf bookcases, six drawer dressers and armoires with two shelves on top. Of course it was a women’s college, so maybe they just had more stuff on average?
Several years ago son moved into a dorm with bookshelves, a towel bar… Made a second trip to campus a week or so later. His books were anywhere but the empty bookshelf and the towels not hung on the towel bar. Kid was/is a slob. Did well academically and does well at work as well.
So by way of update we did have to remove furniture from my DS’s room. He could not fit the furniture in the room and still fit a fridge and microwave, which he needed for health reasons. With the wardrobe out of the room and it carefully rearranged and lofted, it was fine.
I stand by my original comment. I can’t imagine why students would need a bureau with 6 large drawers, a file cabinet with 2 more large drawers, a desk with another wide flat drawer, a book shelf, and still need a wardrobe. We hung the winter coat from the loft bed, and presto no need for a wardrobe.
What about students who have dresses and such that do better with hanging in a closet or wardrobe rather than being crammed into a dresser? That said, my kids of both genders would put all that storage space to good use.
Well as it was arranged when we walked in, one could not open the wardrobe door without moving the dresser. So it would take some heavy lifting to reach the dresses.
A girl might choose the wardrobe over the dressers. I think it depends on what you are used to. At our house, we hung everything and my girls just had a small dresser for undies and socks.
My daughter is also dealing with the ‘too much furniture.’ She’s in a room in her sorority that is sometimes used for two students, but it is it really small so this year is a single. Still has a bunkbed (that is set up wrong so the lower bunk can’t be used for sitting) and two desks. I think the drawers are built in. My daughter never likes to cause any trouble so would never ask for a desk to be moved and stored - she’ll just bump into it all year.
@doschicos - I agree that for most students storage space is at a premium. We just moved our son into his single at Haverford. Luckily, the wardrobe/dresser were built into the wall. His room is 92 square feet and I don’t think a dresser and wardrobe would have fit on the floor there. OTOH he needed every bit of hanging space in the wardrobe. He is particular about his appearance and hangs all his jeans/casual pants as well as his button down shirts to avoid as much ironing as possible. It all fit but he needed the space.
He has a bed which is raised enough to put storage underneath, a desk/chair, night stand (which fit under the desk on the right side, and a small bookshelf. We were able to fit a refrigerator at the foot of the bed and a small tv on the shelf above the desk (wall mounted). I don’t know where he would have fit a wardrobe/dresser on the floor if it wasn’t recessed into the wall.
My older son lived in a double at Case Western and he had a wardrobe/dresser built into the wall as well. Both the Haverford and Case dorms were built in the 1960s. I wonder if that was the standard at the time. My middle son lived at Belmont U in a dorm that was over 100 years old. He had a room mate and their room was ENORMOUS compared the the Case and Haverford rooms. We bought them some folding chairs that they could put in the center of the room to watch tv.
It’s certainly understandable that college housing departments want to economize with mass purchases of furniture despite widely varying dorm floor plans, particularly for older colleges with dorms constructed over a period of decades or more. It’s also worth considering that colleges should be doing their best to accommodate as many students as possible, especially Freshmen, on campus, so small dorm rooms for underclassmen shouldn’t be a surprise.
What the OP described doesn’t seem that unusual to me based on my own college experience and that of our D who recently started her Junior year at college. That’s another great reason for college visits. Of the three out of state colleges our D and I visited, one had remarkably large dorm rooms for Freshmen, one had dorm rooms that were so small they resembled jail cells, and the third she eventually chose and as accepted to was about average in terms of Freshman dorm room size, but they had central air and heat, beds could be elevated to increase storage space, and there was enough room for a micro refrigerator and microwave oven . If dorm room size is an important consideration, that’s something to discuss during a campus visit.
Due to the very long distance to our D’s college, she has to fly there and back. When she started her Freshman year, my wife and I flew there with her and used our check baggage allowances to bring clothes and other essentials with her, purchased bedding and bathroom supplies at a local Bed, Bath, and Beyond based on our own list informed by a campus visit, and purchased a couple storage units at a nearby Target that we assembled for her. One stoarge unit doubled as a nightstand, too.
During Freshman move-in week, we found it humorous to see families living within driving range filling their large SUVs and pulling U-Haul trailers filled with stuff to campus. I wonder how much stuff those parents wound up taking back home with them because it would not fit in their child’s dorm rooms.
If you’re within easy driving range of your child’s college, you’re lucky. Our D places many of her belongings in Summer storage at the end of each academic year so she doesn’t need to lug it home and back again.
Just to say – my son’s room is unusually small for his college, which is why the obligatory furniture did not actually fit. I get this impression from the housing people (students) who came to remove the wardrobe – they looked around and said, “Wow – this room is really small!” When visiting colleges, it never occurred to me that a university may insist on standard furniture for a room that can’t safely fit that furniture in the room. Live and learn. I am so glad both parents were able to drive him to move-in day to help him re-arrange it. This took some serious heavy lifting.
@ARTCC DS almost chose Haverford. Alas, it was too close to home.
