Moving into a dorm at college can be a difficult thing for most students because it’s probably the first time that you will be living away from home and will therefore have to arrange everything on your own in a completely different environment.

Additionally, most students living in dorms have to share the room with other students and therefore you need to carefully plan what each of the roommates should bring to how and how stuff has to be organized in that not-so-spacious dorm room.

If you are also heading off to college and plan to live on-campus in one of the dorm rooms, you should check out DesignYourDorm.com. This web service allows incoming freshmen and other college students to view the interiors of their future dorm rooms on the web in 3D even before they arrive on campus.

If you happen to attend one of the colleges that are listed on the signup form, you can select your exact room and get a virtual model of it right from the start.   Or you can select a room style from their selection of common dorm room layouts.

The site has exact dimensions for every dorm room (by room number) at a handful of schools including USC, University of Pennsylvania, UCLA and U of A, and general floor plans at almost every other school in the US. If you are not attending a US college, you can still use the service using one of the default templates.

DesignYourDorm allows you to collaborate with your future roommates about stuff that should be in your dorm room. Once all the roommates have an account, they can see what the other roommates have added to the room and can add their own items to the room as well.   This should help prevent roommates from bringing duplicate items, and it can also help them agree on what will be in the room before they even move in.

Everything that you add to your future college dorm room from books to bed-sheets to electronics are added to your shopping cart. Through an arrangement with Amazon, all of the items that you add to your dorm can be directly purchased from the site.   Then, instead of getting everything sent to your home, you can simply have Amazon mail everything right to your dorm so the stuff will be there when you arrive.

If you are moving into a dorm or have a child moving into one, give DesignYourDorm a try before moving - it just might make that first day away a little easier!

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