<p>Does anyone have any info on how Penn State assigns roommates if you don't pick one yourself? Do they try to match you with someone in your major to college or is it really just a random selection?</p>
<p>Other than matching you with another freshman, it’s random. If you’d like to room with someone in your major, look into whether there’s a SLO (Special Living Option) for your intended field of study.</p>
<p>It is completely random! I started in the Summer of 2011 and had a random roommate! She is one of my best friends but as she was doing a special living option that I couldn’t do I chose to room with a friend with high school! I no longer live with her! I will say this though, it is quite easy to move dorms if something is not working out!</p>
<p>S ended up with someone else from his old high school. If they’d wanted to be roommates, they would have requested it. :p</p>
<p>^ That’s funny. Out of 15,000 or so freshmen, what are the odds. My d is the only one she knows that is going to Penn State (OOS) from her high school. I think she has decided going with a random selection is too risky. Apparently, she is hearing many stories of severely mismatched random roommates. She is on Facebook trying to find someone with similar interests/study habits. I just thought that if they try to match you with someone in your major or at least the same college, that would help.</p>
<p>Have you looked at the SLOs?
[Housing:</a> Undergraduates](<a href=“Home Page | LiveOn”>Home Page | LiveOn)</p>
<p>Had a family member who chose an SLO and got a roomie with a permanent boyfriend who would spend the night. While the roomie was at work, so there was the weirdness of waking up with a stranger in the next bed over. The next year, in an apartment, the friend who talked her into living there got a third roommate – a guy they barely knew — and the friend was rarely home BUT the guy turned out to be great and they are still very good friends (he’s going to be in her wedding!). So there are no guarantees at all. PSU has a very good switch-the-roommate procedure so I wouldn’t worry too much about getting stuck with a bad match.</p>
<p>Perhaps family member could have used assertiveness training? (Or talked to the RA.)</p>
<p>Thanks for all the input. D found a roommate on Facebook. Hopefully, it works out.</p>
<p>^^ we used to joke that the whole freshman year was assertiveness training…the RA was no help at all, but we did convince her to either come out to us on the Fri/Sat nights she knew there would be “company” and the others she slept on a friends’ floor. And of course, the couple broke up by December and then it didn’t matter. Talk about stuff you just can’t plan for :)</p>
<p>I’ve never understood why PSU cannot do better than a totally random match. Students could be surveyed with a few basic questions about sleeping/studying/living habits and matched by responses. My older son’s (much smaller, I admit) school did such a good job that he lived with the same three guys for four years and that was not at all unusual.</p>