My daughter signed up for a triple, which would have meant no lofts (school only allows w/permission) or bunk beds. However due to overenrollment, her triple was made into a quad. With all extra bed, desk and dresser, there wouldnt have been room without bunking or lofting. We did not find out until we got there (or maybe it was when we got the letter announcing the overenrollment which was at the end of July), that beds were actually assigned based on when you made your housing deposit! Funny thing is, I don’t know how the determinations were made as to which beds were considering a better choice. We showed up and there were two lofted beds and a bunk bed. My D had the top bunk. Girls had no idea who had made deposits when so no idea which beds were considered “better” in the school’s eyes.
In the end, I think the top bunk was better then either of the lofted beds b/c it wasn’t as high so she could sit up completely, while the lofted beds were closer to the ceiling and if you tried to sit up fully, head would be touching the ceiling. The girls never swapped. The bottom bunk girl did offer for my D to have the dresser immediately next to the bed so she could easily place things on top of it from her bed w/o D having to climb down. Fortunately, the room was good sized, they had a big walk in closet and their own bathroom that had a huge floor to ceiling cabinet that provided a lot of storage so even with four girls, the room wasn’t too claustrophobic.
Had the beds not been assigned, I would hope that the kids would wait until everyone got there to decide how to choose beds. When I was in college, my senior year I ended up in an on campus 2 BR with five girls. The triple room had a bunk bed. We decided ahead of time that at semester break, the we would swap-girls in the bunk bed moved to the other BR and those two girls moved to the bunk bed. The one who had a regular bed both semesters stayed in the triple. It all worked out b/c we agreed ahead to do it that way. Of course we were all friends, so that helped, might be harder with freshmen meeting for the first time and some being more selfish than others.