<p>I got in at 3:30 this morning and was snooping around my kid's papers and read this stuff on his Housing Preferences form:</p>
<ol>
<li>I'm a restless sleeper and sometimes I fall out of bed. This can be disturbing.</li>
<li>I don't mind gay roommates as long as they don't try to "touch" me.</li>
<li>I'm somewhat messy. Actually I'm pig messy. Actually I'm a pig.</li>
<li>I don't do reefer but I don't mind herding people who are baked.</li>
<li>I love coffee and would like to room with a coffee lover.</li>
</ol>
<p>Not sure what the last part of the 4th one means. I didn't know stoned people needed herding.</p>
<p>B.T.W. Good job, parents, on getting those kids to college.</p>
<p>That’s’s hilarious. I suppose he means living with them or sheltering them (or just dealing with them). Wonder what the person he gets paired up with would have to put on his housing preference form for Housing to match them up based on reefer use?</p>
<p>We were told a funny story from someone in the housing dept. at a small college. She said that someone wrote that they were messy on their registration, so they were paired up with someone who was messy too. Months later, the girl complained because her roommate was too much of a slob, and she couldn’t take it and wanted to move. When the woman questioned her because she had written that she was messy on her housing form, the girl said she only did it because she thought she would get a single that way - instead she got a sloppy roommate!!</p>
<p>The worst is people who say that they are neat, or like their room neat thinking they will be roomed with someone who will always do the cleaning. I also think there needs to more specific questions. When they ask if they like their room neat, or if their room is normally neat they should follow it up with a question on who keeps it that way. If a kid has a parent who is always cleaning up, sure they like the room neat, but it doesn’t say anything about if they will actually do the work to keep it that way themselves.</p>
<p>For anyone that hasn’t sent their form in, be sure to have your kid mention if they’re a morning/night person! I was lucky and got paired with someone else that liked going to bed at 2 AM, but I know some of my friends weren’t, and it wound up with a bit of conflict.</p>
<p>I remember Carnegie Mellon’s form really only had three questions. One about sleep hours (which no one actually knows, since high school usually requires much more regular hours), one about whether you like noise or quiet for studying I think, but maybe it was just are you a smoker, and the third was how often do you expect to clean your room - every day, once a week, once a month or never. My son marked once a month, and then thought better of it and said never. His roommate was, of course, a slob. It would have been fine except they had a kitchen in the room (a 1 bedroom apartment very nice!). My son didn’t cook, but roommate made a huge mess in there and had completely vanished a few days before moveout. </p>
<p>Tufts asked lots of questions, but my son didn’t think they paid any attention to them since he had absolutely nothing in common with his roommate.</p>
<p>I filled it out for D2 because I wanted to make sure it was submitted as early as possible, and she is getting a single, so it wouldn’t have mattered.</p>
<p>The two categories of questions that colleges leave out on roommate questionnaires are those about drinking/partying and sex in the room. Colleges don’t want to acknowledge that there could ever be a problem with either, yet those are the two issues that have caused most of the roommate conflicts of which I have known.</p>
<p>Some colleges have Facebook roommate-matching sites, on which students can choose to answer questions about everything from snoring to their sexual orientation to how often they plan to go home. Those sites make for interesting (and highly public) reading. Some students are so honest that they must either have very permissive parents or they have no clue that anyone other than students would ever read what they’re posting!</p>
<p>My daughter described some of the questions she had to answer. Based on her answers, I believe they will room her with a foreign student who speaks no English.</p>
<p>^LOL. Back in the dark ages I asked for a roommate who spoke French and German and had traveled. (The question was obviously very open ended.) Amazingly enough, my roomate was Bengali, with a German mother and her family was living in Paris at the time. I bet the housing office patted themselves on the back about that match! She was a great roommate and very useful help for first year German. :)</p>
<p>The funniest thing was my son’s response to the question about neatness/cleanliness, describing himself as “fairly neat”. Are you kidding me, his room at home generally looked like a goat blew up in there.</p>
<p>Mathmom, IIRC you and I were matched with roommates by the same Freshman Dean’s Office around the same era. I think they took pride in their work!</p>
<p>My proctor made a point of assembling a string quartet in our entryway of 16 people. This was the kind of thing that amused her. I could tell she was working alphabetically, though, because half of us were last names J through K!</p>
<p>I didn’t think there could be a person messier than my S. Then I met his roomate. Son says that he’s forced to put his clothes in the drawers because roommate steals all space on the floor.</p>
<p>College “cleanliness” etiquette can be confusing.</p>
<p>When I found out my school offered maid service, I was elated. For years, I heard my mom telling me “Pick up your room. I am not your maid!” --which made sense. During the first week at school, I met the amazing housekeeper who would be a lifesaver. </p>
<p>It did, however, mark a distinct change. Her line was "“Pick up your room. Whom do you think I am. I am not your mother!”</p>
<p>When I was in college, I remember having maid service. She came in few times a week to clean our private bathroom and vaccum our room. When D1 started school, I just assumed her school would also provide maid service. I was very surprised when I found out otherwise because I just couldn’t see those college students cleaning their rooms on a regular basis.</p>
<p>I think for sanitary reason, schools would be better off in charging a little bit more for room and provide weekly cleaning service.</p>
<p>Instead of paying more for weekly cleaning service (I can’t pay more for anything!!) would prefer that rooms get inspected with some regularity - say, monthly - so that the filth gets somewhat contained with some requirement for a level of cleanliness or the kid(s) gets fined or something.<br>
On my kid’s housing form last year he described in great detail why living with a roommate would be a bad idea…and he got a single.</p>
<p>I don’t know too many colleges which offer maid services. Mine certainly didn’t. People I knew who attended many elite private colleges didn’t. Thought that was a thing from the distant past when they had “Dorm mothers” and most private college students tended to be from wealthy families and “Cleaning up rooms” is “Oh, so beneath them”. </p>
<p>Closest thing I’ve seen was when taking classes at Harvard Summer school, they had laundry service for dorming students who didn’t want to bother cleaning their clothes. Didn’t know too many fellow summer kids who used the service…even some well-off ones. </p>
<p>They had the same feeling I did…laundry isn’t that big of a deal and the money’s better spent elsewhere.</p>
<p>UW-Madison quit using those preference forms a long time ago. They found just as good matching with randomness.</p>
<p>olfort- why wouldn’t a college student take the same room cleaning responsibilities they had at home? In a dorm at least the public bathrooms are cleaned regularily. I still remember visiting an elemntary school classmate’s home and discovering that while they had a cleaning service that didn’t extend to clearing messes- books all over et al (the father was a college professor). I can’t imagine a college maid service being allowed to mess with students’ things to order them. Pretty pointless to dust around heaps of books and clothes. Back in my day my U’s public dorms provided one clean sheet and a pillowcase every week- you put the top sheet on the bottom and left the two dirty items in the hall. They no longer provide linens. btw- I just remembered stopping by to see my old college chemistry advisor who wasn’t in several years ago- I don’t know how his office could be swept/dusted with all of the piles of books/journals on so many surfaces, including the floor.</p>