Back to College Products Improving Campus Life

Going away to college usually means learning to live with less space, more devices, a roommate or two, and a schedule that rarely resembles the one you had at home. A dorm room may serve as bedroom, office, dining room and social space all at once, so anything you bring needs to earn the square footage it occupies.

The goal is not to recreate an entire bedroom from home or fill every available surface before move-in day. Start with the things that make studying easier, sleeping more comfortable and everyday campus life a little less complicated. For students and parents preparing for the bigger transition, our guide to How To Set Yourself Up For The Perfect College Experience covers everything from choosing housing and managing finances to academics and settling into campus life.

For the room itself, these five upgrades address some of the things students will actually use every day.

Turn a Laptop Into a Real Workstation

A laptop may be all a student needs while moving between classes, but back in the dorm room it often becomes the center of everything from research papers and presentations to photo editing and streaming. The problem is that many of today's laptops offer fewer ports just as students seem to acquire more devices that need to connect to them.

The EZQuest USB-C Multimedia 8-in-1 Hub is a small solution to that very modern problem. A single USB-C connection expands the laptop's capabilities to accommodate an external display, USB accessories, SD and microSD memory cards and other devices.

For a student who connects a monitor at the desk, transfers photos from a camera, uses an external drive or still owns a few USB-A accessories, a hub can eliminate the collection of individual adapters that otherwise ends up scattered across the desk. It is especially useful when the same laptop needs to remain portable enough to grab for an 8 a.m. class.

The result is not necessarily a larger college tech collection. Ideally, it is a smaller and more versatile one.

Students putting together the rest of their everyday setup can find additional ideas in our Campus Lifestyle Essentials Every Student Needs for a Successful Year.

Give the Desk Better Light

Dorm-room overhead lighting can technically illuminate a room. That does not necessarily mean you want to read a textbook underneath it for three hours.

The Honeywell HWT-H01 LED Desk Lamp gives a small desk its own dedicated light source without taking up much room. Its foldable design is particularly useful in a college setting, where every inch of desktop tends to acquire a second job before the end of the first semester.

The lamp offers three color-temperature settings at 3000K, 4000K and 5500K, along with adjustable brightness. That allows a student to move from warmer evening lighting to brighter task lighting depending on what is happening at the desk. Honeywell also rates its color rendering index at 95, providing more natural-looking color than many inexpensive utility lamps.

Perhaps more useful in a dorm room are the USB-A and USB-C charging ports built into the lamp. When outlets are limited and laptops, phones, watches, headphones and other electronics all seem to need charging at the same time, one more convenient place to plug in becomes surprisingly valuable.

Make the Dorm Bed Feel Less Like a Dorm Bed

There is no elegant way around it: the mattress supplied in a residence hall is unlikely to be the part of college anyone writes home about.

Bedding is one of the easiest ways to make an institutional room feel personal without bringing in more furniture or filling the walls with things that may violate housing rules. Before shopping, however, check the dimensions supplied by the school. Many college residence halls use Twin XL mattresses, which are longer than standard twins. UCLA Housing, for example, lists its undergraduate residence-hall mattresses at approximately 80 by 38 inches. UCLA Housing is a useful example of why checking the school's specifications before buying bedding matters.

For a Twin XL bed, the Quince Bamboo Sheet Set offers a noticeably more grown-up alternative to the obligatory back-to-school sheet bundle.

The sheets are made from viscose derived from organic bamboo and have the smooth, soft feel associated with bamboo bedding. Their breathable construction is also appealing in a residence hall, where students do not always have much control over room temperature.

Most importantly, good sheets are not something taking up precious dorm-room space purely for decoration. They are used every single night. If there is one place where spending a little more for comfort can make sense, it is the place a student is supposed to recover before doing everything again the following morning.

Do Not Treat the Pillow as an Afterthought

A dorm bed does not need a mountain of decorative pillows. It does need one that is comfortable enough to sleep on.

The Marshmalloo Pillow brings another layer of comfort to a bed that may otherwise feel very different from the one left at home. The pillow uses a soft microplush-style fill and a stretchy, breathable cover designed to retain its shape rather than remaining flattened after a few nights. Marshmalloo also offers Standard, Queen and King sizes, allowing students to choose according to the bedding they are bringing with them.

There is also something to be said for making the bed genuinely comfortable rather than merely photogenic on move-in day. In a dorm room, the bed inevitably becomes more than a place to sleep. It may also become the spot for reading, calling home, watching a movie or sitting with friends when the room contains exactly one desk chair.

Better sheets and a comfortable pillow are simple upgrades, but unlike many things packed for college, they are unlikely to spend the semester untouched in the back of a closet.

Choose a Speaker That Can Leave the Room

A college speaker should probably be able to survive college.

Rather than buying something destined to live permanently on a bookshelf, the Turtlebox Ranger is designed to travel from the dorm to wherever the weekend goes next. It is the smaller portable speaker in the Turtlebox lineup, making it better suited to a college room than an oversized sound system while still being built for outdoor use.

That versatility is the reason it works here. A portable speaker may provide music in the room one evening and go to the beach, pool, quad, tailgate or weekend trip the next. For a student attending college near the coast, it may spend considerably more time outside than sitting on the desk.

There is also a practical advantage to choosing equipment that can handle water, dust and the inevitable knocks that come with moving between places. A product does not have to be disposable simply because it is heading to college.

There is one obvious rule worth mentioning: roommates and neighbors did not jointly purchase the speaker. Good sound is an upgrade. Knowing when to turn it down remains an essential college skill.

Pack for the Life You Will Actually Live

Preparing for college can quickly become an exercise in preparing for every possible scenario. That is how vehicles arrive on campus carrying appliances that are prohibited, storage systems that do not fit and enough decorative accessories to furnish a small apartment.

A better strategy is to start with the parts of college life that happen every day. Students need somewhere comfortable to sleep, enough light to work, technology that functions without unnecessary frustration and a few things that allow a new room to feel less temporary.

Safety belongs in that preparation as well. Our guide to College Safety Essentials Every Student Should Have Before Move-In Day covers considerations including backup phone power, dorm security and navigating campus after dark.

Before buying anything large, students should check their school's housing information for room dimensions, provided furniture and prohibited items. Many residence halls already supply desks, chairs, dressers or wardrobes, and policies surrounding appliances and electronics can vary considerably from one campus to another.

Once those basics are established, resist the urge to fill every remaining inch. A handful of products that solve genuine everyday problems can do considerably more for campus life than a room full of things purchased simply because they appeared on a back-to-college checklist.

College rooms may be small, but they have a remarkably big job to do.