Choosing Roommates

I know you have no choice in what residential college you’re placed in but do students choose their roommates? Or are they randomly assigned?

Most students let the school match them up with a roommate, but you can also room with someone you know or find on your own. The students asking for a roommate match fill out an extensive questionnaire. The O Week Coordinators (students in charge of Orientation) spend a great deal of time matching up the roommates and building the suites, etc. My daughter let Rice match her, and it did a great job. She is still rooming with 4 of the girls in her 6 person suite 3 years later.

Thanks so much! We haven’t been to Rice yet (attending an admitted student day soon) so we just don’t know as much about how things work there as we do the others schools she’s considering.

Rice randomly assigns students to residential colleges. The only exceptions are legacy students who can request to be in the same college as a direct relative (parent, sibling), or request not to be in the same college as a direct relative. Students may request a roommate, or request to be in the same college as another student (but not be roommates). If two students request each other, they will be assigned to the same residential college (same if they request to be together in the same college, but not roommates). Because each college is intended to be a microcosm of the Rice community (with a mixture of majors, home states/countries, genders, ethnicities), I believe that each residential college will cap the number of students who come from the same high school (by class). College assignments come out in early July, and roommate assignments come out soon after that.

Because of the college system, students don’t tend to find roommates through Facebook groups like they do in other schools. There is a roommate pair in my daughter’s college who met during Owl Days and requested to be roommates, but other than that most of my daughter’s friends were randomly assigned. As @Houston1021 mentioned, the system works pretty well!

Students will fill out a detailed roommate questionnaire, and this is sent to the O-week (orientation week) coordinators from the college that the student is assigned to. The O-week coordinators are students who have been elected to be in this position, and as @Houston1021 noted, these students put a tremendous amount of time and effort into matching roommates and selecting rooms for them in the residential college.

My recommendation to any incoming student is to fill out the roommate questionnaire yourself. I would strongly recommend that the parents not get involved! Fill it out authentically to who you are, realizing that you will learn and grow as a college freshman - but don’t fill it out in an aspirational manner thinking that you will be an entirely different person in college.