<p>
[quote]
I got bad vibes when one of the first questions she asked was whether I wanted to match linens
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Oh my goodness. I was thinking of telling my daughter to ask her roommate that question. Glad I didn't! I wouldn't want to freak anyone out. There are just so many sources for cheap cute comforters (overstock.com, jcpenney.com outlet or sale section) I thought that if the girls wanted to have a "matching room" I could buy them a pair as a "housewarming gift." My idea became a non-issue when daughter decided she wanted to have the old but still bright and cheery comforter from her bedroom at home become her dorm comforter.</p>
<p>My daughter and the fall roommate she found on line have discussed the idea that they do not expect to be best friends, no pressure. They thought that they both seemed reasonable and they both believe that they are better off with choosing each other than taking a chance on what the random selection process might yield. (logical girls, thinking about probabilities) Also, they are in honors housing but in different honors programs, which both think is good. Roomie is in an intense science honors that will throw her together constantly with a smallish group of kids she thinks she might get tired of - she wouldn't want to room with one of them too. The two girls figure they will each have a circle of friends from their own honors program and will meet the kids in each others' programs too. This will be one nice way to find some friends among the 8000+ new freshmen at the college.</p>
<p>Both girls are serious about school and both currently consider themselves to be social but non-partiers. Sounds good. Roomie is quite athletic; I think this will help my daughter consider stuff like "hmm, should I sign up for the saturday afternoon kayak trip?" stuff she would enjoy but maybe not think of doing. Both are from out of state and a good ways away so they will stay around on weekends. It sounds like it will be all right.</p>
<p>They have pledged to each other that if either of them wants to go check out a club or activity the other one will come along and stay at least for the beginning. It is intimidating to walk into something alone. I asked my daughter "But what if she wants to go to the meeting of the country western line dance club?" and daughter said, "no problem, I'll go with her to the first meeting." :)</p>
<p>Hope I am not posting two weeks into school for advice because they are at each other's throats! I think my D told her she was a medium on the neat to sloppy scale. Maybe on the TEENAGE neat to sloppy scale, but in our house, D is definitely the messy one. But we always hear how her friends' rooms are so much messier than hers that she can't believe her dad and I are complaining.</p>
<p>A few years back, when I worked at Smith, the roommate questionnaire asked a dozen or so questions (not sure if it's still the same now) but the only one that was a "lock" was the smoking issue. That is, night owls might end up with early risers; neat freaks with slobs. But, when it came to smoking, non-smokers were always paired with other non-smokers. Yet, despite these careful efforts, there were routinely situations like the one in this "Ask the Dean" column, where some non-smokers unwittingly got stuck with closet smokers or new converts to the nasty habit. </p>
<p>Well, that's just a version of what has to be a generic problem with any kind of matching system -- roommates, dating, whatever. 18-year-olds, many of them leaving home for an extended period for the first time in their lives, are works in progress. Today's choirboy is tomorrow's binge-drunk slut (and maybe later CEO, community pillar, and loving dad).</p>
<p>One of the odd, vivid memories I have about college involves all the people who re-made themselves -- or tried to -- when they got there. Most of the re-makings slowly got unmade over the course of the next few years, but I remember marvelling that there were people whom I considered close friends whose "real" selves I barely knew at all. Some of them even adopted new names for college, but then went back to the old ones. Between that, and the A-students bustin' loose, and the loose women going through a second virginity, and the pious experiencing doubt, and the cynics falling in love with faith, and the comings-out, and the pre-meds who turned out to be English majors . . . it was dizzying sometimes.</p>
<p>I'm not sure matching is less random than random.</p>
<p>
[quote]
As it turns out, the mysterious process that is roommate-matching is actually fairly straightforward. Director of Residential Life, Myrt Westphal does the matching each summer. It takes several weeks of non-stop work, which she does by hand at home, one gender at a time. “The main thing is to work with the habits,” such as sleeping patterns, study preferences and neatness, Westphal said. “You can’t put the super neat with the super messy.” About 15 percent of people classify themselves at the extremes; the rest are more flexible. </p>
<p>Once she’s sorted out questionnaires based on lifestyle, “Next is interests, so hopefully roommates will have interests in common,” Westphal said. With doubles it’s simple. For those lucky frosh with Wharton quads, she tries to make sure each member has interests that overlap with those of at least one of their roommates.</p>
<p>Westphal tries not to match incoming first-years with people they already know. That means roommate requests usually don’t get honored. She especially worries about people who met at Ride the Tide and then ask to be placed together. “Meeting someone for one weekend and maybe talking over e-mail isn’t a good basis for a friendship,” she said. “I tell them, ’You’ll meet someone new, and your friendship will survive.’”
<p>It certainly should. Hookah is actually worse than cigarettes in terms of nicotine dosage and the other harmful substances, simply due to the quantity of smoke inhalation.</p>
<p>at my school having a hookah was considered drug paraphernalia, because it can be used to smoke marijuana... because it's not like you can smoke out of a soda can, cigar, apple...</p>
<p>Quote:
I got bad vibes when one of the first questions she asked was whether I wanted to match linens </p>
<p>I was thinking of telling my daughter to ask her roommate that question. </p>
<ul>
<li>It was one of the first questions that my Ds future roomate asked her during their first telephone conversation last year. As unbelivable, as it may sound, they match on all 3 colors.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>As I mentioned before, my D was lucky with her roomate and they signed up to stay together next year, despite the fact that they are not friends by no means, just roommates who are nice to each other living in a same room. The fact that small questions like the one above did not bother either of them was a good indication of reasonable people who can ask each other any questions without tip toeing about is it important or not or how other person will feel about it.</p>
<p>Roommate questions were very basic--same sex floor or not, quiet floor. Freshman class is small so there's not a lot of selection. S was apprehensive about having a roommate for the first time but ended up with someone he knows and has stayed in touch with since summer camp 2 yrs. ago, same major, different instruments. Both of them had the same immediate worry that if they roomed together, they might not still be friends. S is really laid back but a borderline slob (well, more than borderline). I can tell he's seriously planning for his departure because I walked by his room and there were items in the laundry pile that I haven't seen in a year and I could actually see most of the floor in his room!</p>
<p>Scripps asked us the basics: smoking, sleeping habit, alcohol, studying habits, and then had two boxes to describe us and what a good roommate would be, along with a section to list what kinds of music you are into.</p>
<p>One year, a soon-to-be Smith student wrote, "I don't want to live with anyone who leaves old food lying around" in the "Comments" section of her roommate form.</p>
<p>While everyone in the housing office was sympathetic to her concern, they did wonder how they would be able to identify potential miscreants. They didn't think that anyone was apt to scrawl, "I do tend to keep half-finished cafeteria meals under the bed" at the bottom of the form. So they decided that maybe they'd just look for telltale evidence, like grease stains or chocolate smudges on the return envelope. ;)</p>
<p>^^Laughing at the idea that you could figure out how to properly match that girl, but the old food issue was actually a huge point of contention on my floor last year. Naturally people had issues with their roommates, but eventually gross dirty dishes migrated into the common spaces and then it became a floor problem and certain members of the floor definitely made themselves unpopular. Greatly compounding the issue was the fact that these were dining hall dishes and we were one floor up from the dining hall. The laziness amazed/infuriated the rest of us.</p>
<p>Ha. We are caught up in the color of linens thing because, on the one hand, my freshman daughter thinks asking a new roommate what color she wants would freak her out (I think she must have been reading CC), but on the other hand, she does not want to buy anything until she finds out what color the other girl likes. Now this has all been complicated because the girl the school assigned her decided to room with a high school friend unbeknownst to the school, so my daughter is waiting to hear about a new assignment. I am definitely appreciating the fact that oldest daughter had a single at this point, even if it was the smallest room her school had.</p>
<p>Even the best of intentions taken from college applications, dorm questionaires etc can end up with difficult situations, because I dont know anyone who says things like, "I will bring my gf/bf into the room late at night and ask you to leave the room." Who admits to being rude? </p>
<p>Single sex dorms are not better than coed dorms. Stuff happens no matter where you live. </p>
<p>Dorms are challenging. Then again, if you think living off campus in an apartment from soph year on is better.....you need to wake up and smell the coffee. All sorts of problems come out then. Starting with paying the rent and buying food.</p>
<p>Its a learning situation no matter what you do. The BEST policy is to develop a tough skin and try to be as cooperative as you can.</p>
<p>Neatness is not something to be expected or demanded. Unfortunately, they have to tolerate little things like that for the sake of a bigger picture. My D is fortunate to understand that naturally and her attitude made the whole difference in case when her and a roommate could have been miserable otherwise. A lot of kids on their floor were miserable with their roommate. If couple top items on your priority list (neatness is definately inot one of them) are met, you should consider yourself very lucky and go with this attitude.</p>
<p>Why would you need to request a certain race, religion, or sexuality? That just seems very discriminatory to me. Maybe I am missing something, but that seems very rude, racist, homophobic, etc.</p>
<p>^^I find that to be somewhat of an oversimplification, MiamiDAP. I agree that one should not be upset with an otherwise good roommate who's half of the room looks like a bomb went off, but some expectations are reasonable. Like the expectation that you not leave smelly, dirty dishes with decomposing food remains in the room and the common areas of the dorm. And other neatness/cleanliness issues too gross to get into here. There's definitely a tipping point, and I am acquainted with some people who exceeded it.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon asks three questions. One is about smoking, one is about early bird vs night owl, and one was how often do you plan to clean your room the choices were something like every day, once a week, once a month and never. They also ask you to rank first three choice dorms. Since Mathson didn't decide till the last possible moment he didn't get his dorm choices, but it worked out fine. His room was far from campus but it was a large one BR apartment with just one other roommate - very nice. </p>
<p>Back in the day Harvard had a fairly comprehensive form which included something open ended. I said I'd like a roommmate who spoke German and French would be nice too and had traveled overseas. My roommate had a German mother, a father from Bangladesh and was living in Paris at the time. We got along very well, and I was quite impressed with the rooming office.</p>
<p>Carleton has an elaborate questionnaire. Everything from habits to interests.<br>
It also has a policy of not rooming two international students together.</p>
<p>But they must have done a pretty good job- (touchwood) Through the long chats i have had with her-i really liked her- and she seemed genuinely interested in me.
Infact we ended up registering for the same courses even though that happened after we were assigned- we'll have class discussions in our room!</p>
<p>But yes- i didn't let my mom read the questionnaire- shed freak out at what i put in my neatness level!</p>
<p>I happened to meet my roomie when she was on her way home, she happened to be stopping in the state that I live in. We got along really well, I was surprised that we both were interested in Psychology, Japanese, and asian dramas! I'm crossing my fingers that our year should be fine, too.</p>
<p>Wellesley questionairre was very simplistic, and I was disappointed at the time, but I can see how it doesn't really matter. The questions were about smoking, sleeping habits, medical concerns, and favorite music.</p>
<p>I wasn't too concerned about who my roomie was going to be. Most of the girls I met at Wellesley were very nice, and I figured that the chances that I'd be paired with somebody unfriendly would be quite slim.</p>
<p>What's the big deal if you ask about matching linens? D and her roommate talked about it (ended up doing it.) You say yes or no. What's the big deal?</p>