What does the average college dorm look like?

Hello fellow chess players,

I am currently a freshman at Greenville College in Illinois. I am residing in a dorm here called West Oak which I consider nice. It has air condition, separate shower stalls, relatively quiet and relatively clean. Of course, that's all relative to what my stereotype of an average college dorm is.

Next year, chances are I will be "downgraded" from West Oak to a dorm called Jannsen. While Jannsen still has air conditioning and separate shower stalls (unlike two of the other dorms here), it isn't the same quality as the one I'm in now. It's louder and messier. I'm a 4.0 student and going to be a sophomore next year - yet I'm probably going to be downgraded dorm-wise. I don't understand that, but there's no point in arguing that.

Basically I'm curious as to what the dorms are like where you go to/went to college - what would you rate it on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being a dumpster and 10 being some pristine mansion? Did it have air conditioning? Communal showers? 

Thanks for taking the time to read and hopefully respond!

55 years ago at the U of Michigan in West Quad things were quite nice. No air conditioning. I don't remember the showers, but they were adequate. We  had a chair, a desk, a light and a few other things I don't remember clearly.

If your college is anything like mine has been, the sophomore year is typically the worst year for dorms. Freshmen are randomly assigned to freshmen-only dorms, while all other students select dorms based on their position in a schoolwide lottery; the lottery is random within classes but is ordered by seniority, so sophomores in effect have the last choice of dorms.

As to my situation, it's pretty excellent--I was in a double, but my roommate did study abroad and nobody got assigned to replace him, so I've got the room to myself. The same thing actually happened to the two rooms next to me that I share a small bathroom with, so we've got 1 shower, 1 toilet, 2 sinks to 3 people--probably the best you can get. I'm not aware of any dorms here where the showers are unseparated (would that mean everything in the open like a locker room?).

Loud dorms aren't necessarily bad--if you're friendly with the people around you, "loud" becomes "fun."

The worst dorm situation I had was a ground floor dorm closest to the bars--it meant that people would come back outrageously drunk to use our hall bathroom, so it'd often be trashed/vomited in by Saturday morning, with no cleanup until Monday. That was just no good.

sometimes like a waste basket................