<p>Are roommates randomly allocated?</p>
<p>I’ve heard that some universities ask accepted students to fill out some questionnaires regarding personal/social interests etc. and try to find people with similar interests.
I don’t even know if thats true, that may well be some rumor but I want to know how it is at Brown.</p>
<p>You get a questionnaire with about 6 questions (smoker or non, messy or neat, early or late riser, etc.) and then they're randomly selected from that.</p>
<p>FWIW, some studies have been done to show that past a few simple questions, the whole questionnaire thing has no more of a chance of hooking you up with someone you will get along with than what we have.</p>
<p>Basically, from my understanding, Brown tried several ways of doing this including Harvard's way and a few other schools and found that hte only questions matching that seemed to have any effect ( and a minimal one at that) are the one's they still ask, "Do you smoke? Do you stay up late? Are you clean?" etc. After that, its really up to you and them.</p>
<p>what about ethnicity or race ???</p>
<p>Well, Brown does have a policy of placing black people with black people and Jews with Jews, if that's what you mean. Personally, I find it very progressive.</p>
<p>Is it true that freshmen have 0 chance of getting a single?</p>
<p>It's really highly unlikely to get a true single. I had a friend with severe allergies and asthma and stuff who got a two-room double with a private bathroom though. You need to need the single for psychological or disabilities reasons.</p>