Dorm Deluxe

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Schools that do provide them are, some say, creating a two-tier system kids who can afford the extra luxury touches and those who can't. Even without a course in class differences, the students get it. Charity Jeffery, 21, says she ended up moving away from some friends when she settled into Seattle Pacific University's $14.4 million, ski-lodge-style Emerson Hall. "Emerson, right away, was referred to as the rich-kid dorm," she says. "I had to separate from friends who went to another dorm because they couldn't all afford to live in Emerson." Some schools take steps to avoid such rifts. Michigan State charges the same fee for all dorms, regardless of extra frills. The University of Georgia awards nicer dorm rooms to students based on factors like grades and plans to start need-based scholarships to help poorer students pay for them.

Perks, privacy and space are great, but some students find themselves missing the mayhem of traditional dorms. "In more traditional halls, it's easier to interact," says Brian Halcomb, 20, a junior who lives in Emerson at Seattle Pacific University. "You have the common bathroom, and the rooms are closer to each other, so the casual conversations and seeing people happen much easier." To parents footing the bill, though, that can be welcome news. The quiet suite that New York University sophomore Haley Plourde-Cole, 19, shares with two roommates in a luxury high-rise dorm has made it easier for her to study and keep a 3.6 GPA. That makes the $10,000 bill a lot easier for her father Stuart to swallow. Says Dad: "She's earned it."