Move-in day is a scheduling problem
Schools assign arrival windows by building or by floor, and campus parking on that day is a controlled queue with a time limit at the curb. What that means practically is that the load has to be organized before you get there, so the unload is one continuous run rather than a series of trips back to the car.
Elevators in dorms are the bottleneck. There is usually one, everybody wants it, and the line is long. Anything that can go up a stairwell without one saves more time than any other decision on the day.
Move-out and the summer gap
Move-out deadlines are firm and they land during finals, which is the worst possible week for a student to be organizing a truck. Rooms have to be cleared by a stated hour and anything left behind becomes the school's problem and then the family's bill.
Storing over the summer is usually easier than driving everything home and back. A dorm room's worth of furniture, a mini fridge, bins and boxes go into storage in May and come back out in August, which also matters when the student is doing an internship somewhere else for the summer or moving into a different building in the fall.
Off-campus apartments
Junior and senior year usually means a rental with roommates, and the moves get more complicated: actual furniture instead of dorm-issue, lease dates that do not line up between the outgoing and incoming tenants, and landlords who care about the condition of the stairwell.
Roommates moving separate loads to separate addresses is common and worth mentioning at quote time, since it is really several small jobs rather than one.
Keeping the load small
Dorm rooms are small and shared, and most of what gets brought in September comes home unused in May. Ship or store the seasonal clothes rather than moving them twice. Check what the school actually allows before packing it, because rules on appliances, extension cords and furniture vary by building. Anything not worth the trip home can be donated or hauled at move-out instead of riding around all summer.
