I finally committed to UC Berkeley after a long period of contemplation! The decision was hard but atleast I got there.
Anyways, regarding roommates,
is it better to go random, use Facebook, or to roommate with high school friends?
Congratulations!
My extended family and I strongly recommend “going random.”
If you pick someone off of FB there will be expectations and you are obliged to start/continue a friendship.
If you have friends from high school you can still be friends (and maybe escape your random roommate ; ) without the added stress of living together.
Someone asked a similar question recently. All different answers/experience. In you situation, I definitely would not choose a high school friend. Going to college is to experience new things, make new friends, etc. Why room with someone you already know? That’s just me. Other people may offer different takes.
I vote for sending in your profile to the college and let the college find you a match. Is that what you meant by “random”?
And keep in mind if you do pick off of FB, they may change at the last minute and you will go random anyway
Do they do any kind of room mate matching at UCB like major, interests, habits, etc.? Or is it truly random?
Matching only consists of the following questions IIRC (nothing on demographics or major):
- smoking/nonsmoking
- do you need a room during breaks
- when do you sleep
- when do you wake up
- something about trustworthiness
Even though around 30 of my kid’s classmates will attend as freshmen, he’s going to go random, for now.
Forgot the most inportant question in the match questionnaire - how neat are you?
My kid is pretty messy - to be honest it would be nice if he would be paired up with a neat person so that he could be shamed into being neater, but I doubt if the matching algorithm would do that. And he didn’t want to lie about that. Instead he’ll probably be matched up with another messy person which will suck. Also it would have been nice to match him up with another introvert so he could study better, but they don’t ask that question.
I would say I’m usually neat. My friends this year who are going to other schools think random is bad since you get a really weird person or a pothead or something.
Also my friends friend (different high school) wants a roommate and would it be good if I roomed with him?
I don’t actually know him, so it would be the same as going random right?
In order to choose someone, you would have to put his name down and he would have to put your name down in the housing app. Both of you would also need to be in the CalCentral system already. You guys probably would want to talk first and agree to the dorm and room type as well, amongst other things.
I’m not sure when the actual matching occurs, but I have to think it will be pretty soon. My kid is waiting to see if his best friend clears waitlist, so there could be a timing issue there.
Congrats on committing! I personally found a roomate for Ucla and we are still living together as second years. There is certainly an advantage to finding a roomate so at least you know some basics about them. Usually the random surveys aren’t the best since students tend to not be entirely truthful about things.
Thanks for the info everyone!
I decided to put Unit 1, blackwell, foothill, etc… as my priorities (unless someone has good suggestions) and for triples at the units and doubles elsewhere, since I heard most people get triples.
I found one roommate who is a person I know a little from a neighboring school (not much of a friend but hoping to change that) and probably will get a random person as the other roommate (assuming the high chance of getting a triple) so I can experience the best of both worlds.