My first roommate was a wealthy girl who joined a top sorority at UT. I was an engineering student who wasn’t social and didn’t care about fashion, niceties, etc. My roommate decided she needed to make me over. Uh, no thanks. Fortunately, she was never in the room because she was always at her boyfriend’s place. One time when she made a rare appearance, she looked at me and said, “I know when you’re messing with my stuff…” ?!? I was quite happy to be done with her. The next three years, I roomed with a girl I’d met my first year. She became a good friend.
My daughter seemed to get along fine with her roommate this past year. They were on the same wavelength on a lot of things. They had a sensible rule - if the room got messy enough to bother one of them, the other one would clean up her side immediately. They both chose different roommates for next year, but I think they’ll stay in touch.
S1 and D both got assigned roommates based on a matching questionnaire. Neither worked out.
S1’s roommate was a sophomore, great student but high-functioning autism with poor personal hygiene and no tolerance for light or noise or talking. He didn’t wash his sheets the whole first semester. S1 survived on incense and headphones, then moved out to a single second semester.
D’s roommate was, on the surface, a decent match but beneath that they were very different. Both were suburban kids, HS athletes, good students. Her roomie, though, showed up with sundresses and shorty-shorts and joined a sorority while D is an anime-watching nerd who owns no makeup or jewelry. They got along fine for the days they were together, but her roommate moved in with another girl first week of school who was joining the same sorority. D ended up single in a double room until spring break when an exchange student from Guam moved in. They got along well except for the desired room temperature - D wanted 60, Guam girl wanted 80. They settled on around 75.
My freshman roommate in the 1980s was a poor Hispanic kid from the Detroit suburbs and we got along great but joined different fraternities. He dropped out after sophomore year when the Reagan-era federal financial aid cuts came. He joined the Navy and never did finish college.
I was supposed to get an assigned roommate, but my eventual roommate had asked to room with a friend with the same name (first and last) as me and we got mixed up. But, she and I got along great and her “first choice” ended up moving into her sorority house so they wouldn’t have been roommates anyway. My roommate also partied herself out of college and my sophomore roommate was a complete nightmare (to everyone, not just me). After that, I chose my roommates and they were great. I’m still friends with them 30 years later.
1 bad experience, 1 great experience. Kid 1 got the party girl roommate. She started coming home weekends because she “didn’t like taking care of drunk people.” Roommie once came back to the room sans pants. They got caught on something so she took them off. Kid 2 had a great roommate. Unfortunately, finances were easier if she went back to a local school. The roommates of kid 2’s own choosing haven’t been as good as that first one.
Oldest son’s roommate for the first half of his freshman year was nice. The kid got ridiculously drunk maybe the second or third week at a football game but he was a really nice kid with nice parents (we met them at move-in.)
The roommate decided to transfer to another school halfway through the year so my son returned from winter break to meet his newly assigned roommate. International athlete, first time on campus. The kid immediately - like not even bothering with an introduction- wanted my kid to move out so the athlete could move someone else in. My kid said nope. It was apparently pretty tense for the second term but they both survived. My son was able to choose his own roommate for sophomore year.
My youngest son met his roommate for freshman year yesterday at orientation. I’m hoping they hit it off.
Interesting discussion–for most members of my family, I wouldn’t say “great,” but perfectly good–much better than “tolerable.” In many cases, we/they continued to be roommates for several years. My brother is still in touch with his freshman-year roommate, some 40+ years out, but the rest of us have lost touch after that long.
S1 had an awesome roommate and they became (and remain) good friends 4 years post grad.
S2, on the other hand, not such a great match! They were on polar ends of the social spectrum and it created lots of issues. My son is very social and the roommate was very much an introvert and a bit socially awkward. It would have been OK except the roommate would get angry at my son for sleeping past 7am (even if S2 didn’t have class until noon) and taking naps on weekends - so yea, that didn’t go over well…they only lasted a semester. Good news was - my son ended up rooming with a guy he had become (and still remains) friends with so it all worked out in the end.
@Magnetron my D also likes the room cold. One of her roommates liked it warm. The 3rd didn’t care. They agreed to keep it cool at night. Roomie bought an extra blanket. During the day, whoever was in there controlled the temperature. One was probable always hot and the other was probably always cold but they made it work.
My freshman year roommate took the attitude that i was some person who was living in her room. She refused to go to lunch with my parents and I on move-in day, which was a sign of things to come. I’m sure I was not without fault, but I was very happy when she moved in with a person whose roommate had left after a few weeks of school. Everyone else thought that she was very strange, so it wasn’t just me. She transferred out at the end of the year.
Our family experiences generally fall into the not awful/not great bucket. My freshman roomie and I got along ok, but swapped with a pair on the hall because those two were not getting along. My new roomie was easy to live with (as was I) and we lasted two years until I became an RA and got a single. Remained friends, but not close. S (and H, actually) had one of those, get along and tolerate each other roomies that he never saw again after freshman year. D’s roommates were generally ok people but there were four of them in a single room which was a nightmare in terms of interpersonal conflict. Two of them split off and left D and the other to find random open beds somewhere else. D ended up feeling responsible for roomie #4 emotionally and the whole thing was awful. It negatively impacted her whole freshman year and I kind of blame ResLife for not dealing with it better. A single room quad of four 18 year old women is a disaster waiting to happen.
Both D’s have had great roommate experiences. D1 found her freshman roommate on a facebook group for incoming students and they got along great. They have somewhat different circles of friends but they get along exceptionally well as roommates, and are set up to room together for the fourth yer this fall.
D2 was assigned a roommate based on a short questionairre. They got along very well with one another, and less well with their suitemates, one of whom was a loud partier, often crowded her room with people, was frequently drunk, and constantly complained about the room temperature, turning down the air while D and her roommate shivered. The room temperature problem may have just been the result of poor airflow, but she wasn’t super nice about it. They all survived though. D2’s roommate is an RA next year so D is rooming with a different friend.
My daughter didn’t leave this arrangement to chance. She connected with a group of admitted students on Facebook and found a roommate via a very detailed questionnaire that someone posted. They graduated two weeks ago and are still good friends.
My son did leave it to chance and liked his first year roommate so much they lived together again sophomore year. They aren’t great friends, but were very compatible as roommates.
You don’t need a friend as a roommate. What you need is a person with a compatible lifestyle, and you have to have mutual respect for the other person’s needs.
I was telling my MIL about this and thought I would share her story. She met her freshman roommate the day they moved in. They decided to join the same sorority and lived together at the sorority house for three more years. Sixty-some years later, they live several states away, are still good friends, and each visits the other at least once a year (so they see each other at least twice a year). Yup, after 60-something years, they are still great friends.
D and S both had excellent first year roommates that they chose to room with again, became good friends with, etc. Both matched by their colleges based on a form.
My own, back in the day, didn’t work at all. We both requested to switch after a semester. Without speaking to each other about it.
Anecdotally, choosing your own doesn’t seem to help much. I heard horror stories from those that matched themselves in facebook and similar groups designed by the college for the purpose.
I think the bigger issue is high school kids think being BFFs is the key to being good roommates when in fact they are two entirely different types of relationships.
My son had what he considered a terrific relationship with his first roommate. The guy had a girlfriend living elsewhere. He spent almost all of his time with her. My son had what was in effect a gigantic single most of the time.
Women students might consider this less desirable than my son did. But women seem to have more of an expectation of becoming friends with their roommates than men do. Men seem to simply want the roommate to be someone they can tolerate (and it’s real easy to tolerate someone who isn’t there most of the time).
Older d got along with her freshman year roommate but they were not friends. Older d encouraged roommate to socialize with other friends but she wasn’t interested, mostly went to class, ordered food in and spoke on the phone to her dogs (she did become a vet… so??). They never spoke after freshman year and went their separate ways.
Younger d was in a large triple. Three girls so totally different. One girl was very self-centered and what made it difficult is that (no joke) she lived about 20 minutes from us and her father was a made man in the Mafia. Good thing was that she pledged a sorority second semester and was almost never there. Other girl was very quiet and was a recruited athlete for track/field. School was an academic reach and she was mostly in the library or on a field. it was hard to get them to cooperate to keep room clean as younger d had single bed on one side and the other two had bunk beds with row of desks as divider. Large wardrobes on the other wall. She never spoke to either of them after freshman year.
My own freshman experience was a bit traumatizing, but not because she was awful. Back in the 80s, you could actually still smoke in the rooms. I requested a non-smoking roommate because my father had died of lunch cancer the year before.
She was a smoker, ugh - and at that point in my life, it was not anything I wanted to be reminded of. Turns out she lied on her housing application because she didn’t want her parents to know. We came to an uneasy agreement - she took the bed by the window and blew it out the window, even during Syracuse winters - but it did suck.
Funny enough, once we stopped living together we got along great, and continued to stop and chat on campus when we saw each other.
My son just finished his freshman year. HIs school has suites: so two doubles with a shared bathroom.
His roommate and one of his suitemates were great. He and his roommate became friends-- not best friends, but friendly enough to DJ one hour a week together.
One of his suitemates has some significant social issues. The guys really did try to be kind, but it simply was not a good mix. At around Thanksgiving, he ended up switching to a single, and the replacement guy worked out fine.
So overall it was a good year. My son learned how to work through the system to document the issues that “J” was having, and ended up with 3 new friends.
My roommate Freshman year (it was the 80s) brought a boa constrictor with him to school. He lasted two weeks, the snake two days. From that point on in college I always had a single!