I had a terrible experience while in college in Pittsburgh -- I lived with 3 roommates (all of us on the lease), and our landlords were first-time landlords. Well, turned out there was a nosy and evil neighbor who made it her job to complain to the city because apparently the number of unrelated tenants given the number of rooms violated some obscure law that neither we tenants nor our landlords knew about. Having to deal with the stress of one of us possibly needing to move out during finals? Not fun. Since then I've lived/rented in 3 places, and prefer management companies with several holdings, or an individual landlord with several properties, and thus hopefully, proper knowledge of all local laws -- do not want a repeat of the first experience.
I've rented while on varying budgets (student with no income & parents paying, consultant earning 85K/year, now grad student with stipend) but I look for natural light, prefer hardwood or laminate (fake wood is sooo much better than a gross carpet). A dishwasher is not make-or-break, but definitely a perk I take note of.
To be quite honest, I hands down would rather live in a small space that has nice upgrades, then somewhere with more room. I don't know if this tends to be more true for people my age than those who are older, but beyond having enough room for my queen bed, I'm not going to concerned by tighter space, provided it's got nice upgrades.