Dorm-Room Decorating for Dean's-List Students

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 20, 2001 | by Stephen Goode

The IKEA home-furnishings retailer has come out with one of those pre-start-of-school surveys that help us understand what's on the minds of America's undergraduates. No comments from cynics, please. For the people and IKEA both assume that there is something on their minds, though it may not always be the classes they're taking.

This survey, which covered 600 random college students nationwide, wanted to "uncover how our children's college experience is affected by what they decide to bring" with them when they move from home to school, in the words of IKEA's press release.

If this very serious and significant survey is to be believed, what college kids bring with them is very, very important indeed. So here's some advice on what and what not to bring:

* Avoid being a bearer of green blankets. Fifty-seven percent of students who brought a white blanket to college reported having a grade-point average (GPA) of 3.6 or higher. It was otherwise with blankets of a different color: Not one male who brought a green blanket to college reported having a GPA of 3.6 or higher. Significantly, law was the third most popular major among students with green blankets, but it only ranked 13th for students with white blankets.

* Bring those stuffed animals along, no matter what their condition. Students who said they couldn't leave home without their stuffed animals were the most likely to make the dean's list at least once during their years in college.

* Women should bring along sofas, but males definitely should not. Females who had sofas in their rooms were more likely than women who didn't have them to study every day. But males who had sofas were three times more likely to say that they never studied than females with sofas in their dorm rooms.

* If you're a woman, desks don't help and, in fact, may hinder. Females without desks in their bedrooms at college were 57 percent more likely than females with a desk to make the dean's list more than once.

* Think twice about Internet access, particularly if you're female. Females. with Internet access at college were four times more likely to think about dropping out of college compared with females without Internet access at college.

Next week, for the people will offer more findings from this valuable survey.