<p>“So it’s great and all, and maybe she can fly to visit them if she has enough money, but will these friendships endure after graduation?”</p>
<p>Why shouldn’t they? Each of my grandmothers kept up correspondence with her college pals in different parts of the country until the day she died and that was back in the last century. With e-communications, it is even easier. Happykid’s HS friends are now all around the world, and they are fully in touch with each other with Facebook, Skype, etc.</p>
<p>For students who feel like they are in a rut socially, I’d recommend taking a couple of classes outside their major field, and if possible the regular version of the course not the “subjectA for students not normally in subjectA” version.</p>
<p>The research cited in the article appears to contradict:</p>
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<p>Ernest T. Pascarella and Patrick T. Terenzini, “How College Affects Students, Volume 2: A Third Decade of Research.” San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005, pp. 297, </p>
<p>I went to a small LAC and was often surprised to find myself at the same college as some of the other students. I often asked myself “How the heck did this person end up here?”, only to eventually wonder if others were asking themselves the same question about me.</p>
<p>You can still be friends with whoever you want in a randomized residential college system. The question is, who else do you get to know besides your closest friends? No one is best friends with 300 people, but you can be friendly and familiar with that many. Some colleges all but ensure that those other folks you know are a cross-section of the university, not just people who share your interests or your major. And all the RC systems I’m familiar with don’t randomize who lives in a given suite – they still try to separate late and early risers, etc. freshman year. After freshman year, you choose your roommates within the randomized RC.</p>
<p>Re: Posts 16 and 17. Both of my kids went/are going to our state schools. Neither hung out much ,if at all, with kids they knew from high school. Their friends ended up primarily being kids from their dorm ,classes, or in one case , the fraternity. That really seems to be a generalization about kids at flagships and state schools just hanging out with their friends from high school. Haven’t seen that and know many kids that went to or are going to state schools.</p>
<p>Admittedly DC has a lot of transients, but I can only think of a couple of my day girl friends who still live in the area. And at least one of them spent years in Colorado first. My younger son is likely to be one of those kids who doesn’t stay put.</p>
<p>I agree with Hanna, I wasn’t a music major or a scientist, but most of my friends were. They happened to be living in my House (dorm). My actual roommates were a little more like me - though they were pretty random too. We had four different majors in that suite - history, government, religion, and me Visual and Environmental studies.</p>
<p>I too am a fan of the residential college/house type system. They tend to be less segregated by race and/or religion. They also tend to be less segregated by interests. At some schools, all the hockey players or all the newspaper staff choose to live in the same dorm. They can go through the last three years of college living with and eating almost every meal with the same group of people. (I remember reading an article about the basketball team at Cornell. The players attributed their success that year to the fact that they all lived together–most also did so during the summer. It may well have helped build a successful team, but I’m sure very few made good friends who weren’t on the team.)</p>
<p>In the residential college/house system it’s simply impossible for all the hockey players or everyone on the newspaper staff to live together. Some people, most often the athletes, dislike this. They WANT to be able to live together. </p>
<p>My D was heavily into an EC. Yet, she ALWAYS chose to live with people who weren’t involved. Her preferred roommates were people who were equally involved in their own ECs. One advantage of this was that she got to know their friends and they got to know hers. Another advantage was that when there was "drama’ involved in an EC she could get away from it in her dorm room. If she wanted, she could “vent” to a roommate about it without the roommate being someone who was also involved. If she preferred to keep a disappointment or argument/conflict to herself, she could. </p>
<p>In her day, 2 top schools tended to dominate her EC. At the other school, all the people in the EC roomed together and ate together. They were much closer as a group. But when there was conflict within the group, the conflicts spilled over into every aspect of their lives. They really didn’t socialize with anyone outside the group. It was tough for people who decided the EC had become too intense and wanted to quit. If they did that, they suddenly had no one to room with the following year and no one to eat with immediately.</p>
<p>My S is interested in a couple of schools that encourage majors (music) to live together, providing a dorm with its own practice rooms and such for them. He seems to like that idea, since students have told him about being able to practice together at 3AM and that sort of thing.</p>
<p>GladGradDad – I agree. I think students should be able to choose their own roommates, and I think colleges should match on the basis of lifestyle choices as you mentioned. My daughter knows plenty of roommates who chose one another on the basis of rising time/music preference/whether they drink, smoke, etc. Interestingly, race and religion didn’t play a role at all in their selections. Most of her classmates really don’t consider those to be prohibitive differences in friendships, roommate choices, or even in dating relationships. They do, however, care whether or not their roommate is a partier or has a sleepover girl/boyfriend.</p>