<p>Hello - my D is deciding between two colleges and has joined the admitted students facebook page, but she has not had success in finding anyone that matches or has similar interests. She is thinking of using the room mate search tool part of facebook but set up her profile and then it asks for money to actually see your matches. Has anyone had experience with the roommate search tool and was it worth the money? Any other options or suggestions for finding room mates?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Does the school offer any type of roommate matching process?</p>
<p>My daughter’s college offers one, but it really doesn’t become available until May or June, if I recall correctly, and I guess kids get antsy before then and feel they want the matter resolved.</p>
<p>Both our D’s colleges had the match service- check to see if the college has one- worked very well for both of them.</p>
<p>It’s early yet.</p>
<p>I don’t think you should pay for the service. You aren’t really going to get access to the universe of students that are going to live in the dorms. You are going to get matched to the few students who paid for the service. Your best bet is to fill out the profile and submit to the school. And then keep active with the admitted student group and maybe someone new will click and they can call housing and request each other.</p>
<p>Call me old-fashion but I still think getting a roommate matched up randomly works out the best. Both of my sons did it that way and it worked out just fine for them. Did they become best friends with their roommates? No, but they did get along with them, and had no problems at all, because they were both cordial, civil, respectful and considerate of one another. I know so many situations where people think they know their potential roommates by using Facebook, matching services, etc, and when they actually do meet their roommate it does not work out.</p>
<p>^^ I agree - I am a little old-fashioned too and I would hope that the screening questions would avoid mis-matches of really obvious differences like drinking and smoking vs non-drinking and non-smoking, etc…so I am encouraging her to just use the school matching service and keep her eyes on the facebook groups - if someone who seems like a match pops up, fine if not that’s ok. We have decided not to pay for the matching service - seems like a waste of money for no guaranteed benefit : )</p>
<p>Ok, I just talked with the housing office and they do not have any type of screening process for room mates…they really just randomly match them up which makes me a little nervous…I thought they had some general screening questions to avoid common room mate complaints and major life style differences so now I am back to maybe she should look hard to find someone by July which is when the college would march folks up…ugh</p>
<p>That would concern me. I would think they’d at least screen for smokers vs. non-smokers. I’d have her just hang out on the accepted student page on FB and find someone before July.</p>
<p>I agree with whoever said they don’t have to be best buds. Ds1’s freshman roommate was quite different from ds1, but they co-existed quite well. They didn’t elect to live together after that, but it was a pretty uneventful, drama-free year, and that was good enough.</p>
<p>I agree about the part where they don’t have to be best buds…but not having any high level screening over the major life choice areas bothers me…so I think I will take your advice and have her keep watching the facebook admitted students page and maybe even pay for the room mate search tool results on facebook…</p>