- Many years ago, four kids from my high school class went to Yale. Two of us asked to be in the same college, and that request was honored; the others were in different colleges. But the next year, another kid from our school was placed in our college.
- My Old Campus dorm housed students from two different residential colleges, but entryways were exclusive to one college. Except for being assigned to a random suite when I returned after a semester in New York, and except for a transfer student being assigned to my suite when one of my roommates decided to take a leave, everyone I ever roomed with at Yale was in my freshman entryway. Senior year, the suite opposite mine, with which we shared a bathroom, was exactly the same people as had lived in the suite opposite mine freshman year. Two of them shared the same room or suite all four years. Had one of my senior suitemates not decided to take a leave at the last minute, he and another of my senior suitemates would also have shared a room or suite all four years (they had been in the suite one floor below mine freshman year, and we had roomed together with one of my freshman suitemates sophomore year). (Dark side of this phenomenon: It wasn't unrelated that he took that leave. His roommate/best friend had become seriously mentally ill, and living with the roommate had stressed him out to the breaking point. He couldn't do it another year.)
- Also in my college, totally at random: The best friend of my high school ex-girlfriend (they went to a different high school than mine), who had always sort of hated me because she thought -- accurately, it turned out -- that I didn't love her friend enough. She spent sophomore year as the girlfriend of one of my roommates, who after they broke up got involved with one of her roommates. On whom I had had a big crush. It was all a little precious. We are all still friends.
- There were only eight people in my class from the city where I grew up, so it was a little interesting that three of us were in the same college. My college also had two of the three Olympic athletes at Yale at the time, and three consecutive football captains. Random doesn't necessarily produce homogeneity.