Hello! I am going to be a freshman at Pomona next year and I know that there is a very extensive housing form through witch they match you with a roommate but I am wondering if you already know someone / have someone you know you want to room with if you can request to share a double with them. Thanks!
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You can email someone in the Office of Housing and Residential Life (OHRL), https://www.pomona.edu/administration/housing-residence-life. I have no idea, but I do know that they spend a considerable amount of time reviewing those forms and matching you up not only with a roommate (unless you get a single) but also a sponsor group. Your freshman sponsor group consists of 15 or so people housed together along with 2-3 sophomore sponsors. Those groups are not formed randomly. I don’t exactly know what the metric is they use to form the sponsor groups, but my understanding is that it is done by students pouring through the forms, not by a computer. I think it attempts to balance diversity but also forming a group they think can get along, e.g., no obvious lifestyle clashes like people who want a quiet hall with people who want a party hall.
The residential life experience in freshman year is a big part of the experience at a LAC like Pomona. This is not like a huge public university with thousands of incoming freshmen to house. I think it would be better to trust the system to find you a roommate. You don’t need to be best friends with your roommate and it’s actually probably better if you’re not. You just need compatible lifestyles and respect for each other’s rights and responsibilities. I think that the Pomona OHRL might be wary of pairing up existing friends because it could potentially throw off the freshman sponsor group relationship. I’m guessing that they’d rather have everyone in the sponsor group start off on an equal footing, i.e., not knowing each other. But it doesn’t hurt to ask.
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I think the idea of intentionally avoiding pairing people who are already friends is a good one. College is a time to learn different perspectives, to discuss and debate disagreements in a civilized manner, and to co-exist with differences. So a forced matching of cohorts who have substantive differences despite being compatible is a good idea.
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any thoughts on Singles? I heard like Williams that Pomona has over 50 percent dorm rooms as Singles and with the sponsor program even if you have a single you can have wonderful dorm bonding. I also heard they don’t charge more for singles. I do think roommates when they work is a great thing and you can learn a lot about yourself ,but also know when roommates don’t work it can influence a good feeling about freshmen year. I think kids better prepared to pick roommates Sophomore yr when they know people.
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I think it’s true that with the sponsor program you can have great bonding freshman year even with a single. Just FYI, my D indicated a preference for a single, as did her roommate. But they were put together in a tiny double. There were others who requested doubles and were put in a single. So no guarantees! I’m guessing that the planning that goes into the formation of the sponsor group often overrides stated preferences for singles vs. doubles. D and her roommate have gotten along fine, so it seems they were well matched. Plus they are in a dorm with air conditioning, which they were very grateful for in the early Fall.
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@momof2eagles Singles have been wonderful for me at Pomona, and I think it’s a big plus to the housing situation at Pomona that there are so many of them available (to give you the full stats, two thirds of rooms at Pomona overall are singles, including a third of first year rooms; you’re basically guaranteed a single if you want one junior and senior year). It just makes my life easier to be able to go to bed when I want, etc., and so much of Pomona is a social environment that it’s nice to have a space all your own that you can retreat back to at the end of the day. My sponsor group was all singles, but we still bonded really well. And yes, they don’t cost any more—I was shocked when I found out that most other schools do charge more for them, since that seems like a terrible policy with regard to socioeconomic integration (we don’t want to have a “rich kids hall” and a “poor kids hall”).
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S was lucky enough to get a single. fYI although def. not guaranteed when he did his housing questionnaire,. although they didn’t have a box to check whether you wanted a single, there was a space they asked if you wanted to write anything else about yourself to help with the sponsor floor matching. In this box he wrote he would rather have a single. Like @sdkb01 his sponsor group floor is all singles. He said they are really close floor and when they need a break they can just close their door, but many times they have an open door policy or hang out in each other rooms or the hall. There is so much to adjust to Freshmen life, and having a single avoided what is sometimes the most stressful adjustment(adjusting to living with a complete stranger). although at times i think he missed out on having a roomate, it seems to be working out .