Hey everyone! I plan on attending the University of Alabama in the fall 2017! I just wanted to know how everyone decided on their roommates? I’m going out of state without knowing anyone and I was wondering what you guys did to find roommates?? I don’t really want randomized selection so is there any good websites to find one???
You won’t have to worry about a random selection for roommates or even finding a website to search for roommates! UA actually has their own system where (after you put down your housing deposit) you fill out a survey with questions like: what music do you listen to, are you neat or messy, are you are late night person, etc. Make sure you are the one who fills it out because there have been bad situations when parents filled it out for their kids such as the roommates were expected a neat freak, but got a messy roommate instead, something like that. Along that note, be honest on it as well! Anyways, after you fill out this survey UA will match you with people based on compatability, such as 90% compatability. Once you are “matched” with various people, you can go into their profile and read up on them. If you don’t think that they would be a good match, you can move on to the next person. If you think that they would be perfect, you can send them a roommate request or even an email to get to know them more (Facebook also helps here too). Basically, it is like a dating website, but for roommates! Good luck, and don’t worry about being from out of state. Last year, over 50% of the incoming freshman were OOS.
Roll Tide!
@Wisconsinite99 Oh I had no idea, that’s perfect! Thanks for your help! Roll tide! (:
Unless the name has changed, UA Housing calls this survey service “Roommate Finder”. Students have had mixed success with this, and many will tout the FB route instead. Roommate Finder is a STARTING point: you will need to put some work into it to find a good match. I don’t mean it is a lot of work to complete the survey, but there is time involved going in daily/weekly and answering messages from potential roommates and having dialogues with them in order to get to know them. There will be a couple FB sites that pop up with people searching for rooms and for roommates, and some people find that easier. (You can stalk people on all sorts of social media and prejudge if you want…just be mature about it.) This might be an opportunity to review your own social media pages, if needed, and clean up anything you don’t want potential roommates/employers to use against you.
Keep in mind that the finding process might depend on if you are in a traditional vs suite-style dorm: finding someone you can live in the same room with will probably be very different to finding someone you merely share a suite with and you all have your own bedrooms. Your preferences/tolerances for roommates will be different for each situation. In my opinion, it is important to go into the housing situation with the correct attitude: you can co-exist with someone where there is mutual respect; you don’t need to be each others best friend. You and your roommate might develop into best friends…but I wouldn’t go into the search expecting that from the get-go.
@aeromom that’s a good point, thank you!