<p>Ok so ive heard if two students request each other they can get roomed together? I thought it was fully random. If its possible, how/where do the students request to be roommates?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>College assignments are typically random, unless you are a Rice legacy and wish to be placed in the same college as your father/mother/brother/sister/etc. At the beginning of summer, you’ll have to fill out several forms on Esther concerning academic plans, housing, and roommate preferences. You’ll be able to request a specific student as your roommate, or request to be placed in the same college as him/her, but it must be mutual.</p>
<p>So if me and a friend both request each other as roomates, most likely we’ll be roomed?</p>
<p>If I were you, I would not request to room with someone I know. People requesting to room together have led to some of the least successful roommate pairs I’ve seen.</p>
<p>Rooming at Rice is not random; after you are assigned to a college, your Orientation Week coordinators (three upperclass students who run the show) look at everybody’s roommate forms and pair them accordingly.* The O-Week coordinators tend to have an absurdly high success rate in pairing roommates and placing them on floors. There are always a few that don’t work out, but there are also quite a few suites that stay together all four years.</p>
<p>Another good reason to not room with someone you already know is that having the coordinators pair you automatically gives you another friend from day one. Expanding your horizons is never a bad thing.</p>
<p>EDIT: @cowking If you and another person request to be roomed together, you are guaranteed to be placed together.</p>
<p>*It works a little differently at Wiess, but that’s not worth going into now.</p>
<p>I agree with NYSkins here. If you do have a very good friend who is also going to Rice, I think the best bet is to request to be in the same college, but not the same room. That way you both have a better opportunity to expand your group of friends (though it can also be good to be at separate colleges, because then each of you gets a chance to make friends at your own college and you then have a good opportunity to meet people in another college). I’d also recommend (although this is a long way off) that when you fill out the rooming questionnaire you give as much detail as possible; the O-Week coordinators will have a lot more trouble finding you a good roommate match if you don’t give much information.</p>
<p>Ditto on roommates…don’t room with a friend from highschool. It NEVER works out.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m in the minority, but I’ve roomed with a friend from high school for the past 1.5 years with absolutely no problems at all and I stayed with a friend from high school in an apartment over the summer.</p>
<p>[This was not at Rice.]</p>
<p>Thanks guys yea and I was wondering but well be getting random roomates , that’s part of the fun right :)</p>
<p>I posted this on the Housing thread but probably should have put it here:</p>
<p>The residential college system was one of the reasons I applied to Rice ED. I really like the concept and am very excited about next year. I’m very social and I’m looking forward to getting to know the people in my college and making new friends. However I do have one rooming quirk – I’m a neat freak! My friends tell me I’m pathological because I like to organize their rooms for them (their parents thank me). Maybe it goes with being an architecture major. I know some schools have boxes to check on the housing form for “neat”, “average”, or “total slob”. Do the O-week coordinators consider things like that when making pairings?</p>
<p>Yes, they definitely do. The O-Week coordinators try very hard to consider everything a student writes on their housing form, because they are very devoted to putting together roommate pairings that work.</p>
<p>Yeah, they ask just about everything. For the cleanliness part, you rate how clean/neat you are, and you’re asked to elaborate on that. Don’t worry about it now. This all happens over the summer… =]</p>