<p>What are they?</p>
<p>If you snore! And ask them if they snore! My roommate was a generally nice person, but she snored like a donkey at night and it drove me up the wall! I swear at one point I contemplated smothering her in her sleep with my pillow just to make it stop. I had earplugs, but sometimes I could STILL hear it! It was LOUD. Thank God she moved out in December, I definitely wouldn't have been able to deal with another 4 months of sleep hell like fall semester. </p>
<p>Also, talk about your religious preferences (good to know if one of you doesn't share the same religion... an atheist friend of mine accidentally let slip a Jesus insult in front of another friend who's very Christian and it offended him, you don't want to upset your roommate the same way or have them upset you that way). </p>
<p>Tell them truthfully if you procrastinate, so they know that they may be kept awake some nights as you type away on your computer trying to finish that paper you have due the next morning at 8 am. Also tell them truthfully if you're a night person or not. I usually never went to bed before 12:30 or 1 am, but sometimes my roommate (who had said she was a night person) often turned in around 11:30 or 12.</p>
<p>That's a good list so far.
Other questions to add:
If you smoke.
If you mind a roomate who smokes.
What time you wake up.
What time you go to sleep.
If you prefer noise(music) while you study.
If you're generally messy, or care if your roomate is.
If you plan to bring guys/girls in late into the night to get your mack on.</p>
<p>Something else:
ASK your roommate if you can have friends spend the night. Don't just TELL them like, "oh yeah my friends from so-and-so college are staying with us this weekend." I think that's really rude. Maybe then they will also ask you (if they don't, oh well, but at least YOU are being polite about it).</p>
<p>Music preference would be another good one. I, for one, cannot stand rap, hip hop, and most stuff America puts out these days. 90% of the stuff I listen to is European.</p>
<p>Also, make sure you know their morals and whatnot. If you get stuck with some pervert who puts naked women on the wall and you don't think like that, it would be good to know that ahead of time. This also goes true for alcohol--if you don't want to be around drunk roommates/friends, make sure you find out ahead of time so you can go away and hide your stuff when they might be under the influence.</p>
<p>And finally, make sure you have limits on phones. Some roommates can't stand it when their counterpart will have a long heart to heart with their girlfriend from home. I've seen fights erupt as a result of these conversations. It may be better for someone to go somewhere else to make these calls (outside, to the park, etc).</p>
<p>Do they like to sleep in a cold or warm room? I'm really surprised that many colleges don't ask this on roommate surveys. I for one can not STAND to sleep in a warm room. If I get matched up with a roommate who does, it may a be a problem.</p>
<p>Well, that wasn't a problem where I live Bret. The dorms stay FREEZING during the warm months (seriously, leave the a/c on for 5 minutes and you're making icicles in your room) and STEAMING in the winter. You could turn your heat off (not that we needed the heat ON for it to be warm, just the air in the pipes handled that) and leave the window up in the middle of January when it's 25 degrees outside at night and it would barely be pleasant.</p>
<p>That is probably the most important actually! While I'm not in college yet, I had a three week summer camp experience with a roommate... She like the room to be really cold (she liked the feeling of being under blankets in a cold room), and I hate cold! Every time either of us were in the room we changed the AC settings...
I think that was the main reason we hardly talked after the first week.</p>
<p>Another important one is what time you wake up in the morning.</p>
<p>wow...i feel so lucky.
my roommate survey thingie was really specific...everything from music to hobbies to...well...everything.</p>
<p>how many of you actually got to see your roomie surveys?? I was just paired up my first year, no choice involved. I ended up getting along really well w/ my roomie (with few, livable exceptions like different sleep schedules--she would get up to run but I just slept through her alarm, and when she came back at night she expected to go to sleep right then, so I would have to move my work out into the hall) so the randomness worked out well. We had identical taste in music and we each got along really well with the other one's friends. Then after that we got to choose our roommates so they were almost always someone we already know (and thus no need for a survey).</p>
<p>i completely agree with the room temperature thing!
my roommate loved to jack up the radiator and sit in a peacoat while i was roasting in shorts and a tshirt (esp. the time the idiot broke the radiator).</p>
<p>also -- definitely give a lot of consideration if you have to filll out roommate agreement forms with your RA. my roommate and i, like pretty much every other set of roommates, thought everything was perfect so we didn't legitimately fill one out. then after the honeymoon period ends, issues occur. definitely sort out rules of when you can have friends from other schools visit, and definitely figure out what to do when you come home with someone at the end of the night and stuff, what to do if one of you has a boyfriend/girlfriend, etc. all of the tension and hostility that came up between my roommate and i (of two years) stemmed from these issues.</p>
<p>your masturbation habits.</p>
<p>Gross! I am hoping that masturbating room mates is not common practice (despiet the stories...)</p>
<p>haha, thats important though...you dont just wanna walk into your room one day and wonder why all the socks are standing up by themselves</p>
<p>anyway...the snoring, oh god yes...im taking earplugs..the problem is I snore like crazy too, so idk how thats gonna turn out. Study times and room temp are also high on my list</p>
<p>what do you think the rule is on having others over???</p>
<p>say if your roomate brings home a guy/girl and they're trying to hook up...i mean does it just happen and they hope their roomate is sleeping?</p>
<p>As a corollary to the room temp. thing, ask them if they believe in fan death: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death</a> :-)</p>
<p>That is one of the funniest things I've heard in a long time. You are on a roll tonight. :)</p>
<p>I love my fan.</p>
<p>I'm really glad I got a single, albeit at my 4th choice dorm. My plan is to get acquainted with college life first without having to worry about a roommate, establish my study habits, find someone that I'll likely get along with and then room with that person for sophomore year.</p>
<p>wow, fan death is amazing, especially since my roommate and I got conditioned to sleeping with his fan on (i.e., if we didn't turn on his fan, we couldn't fall alseep)</p>
<p>After my summer experience living with 3 other people, I've never felt so right about choosing a single, at least for the first year. It was an interesting and eye-opening experience though, so I don't regret it. Living with them has given me greater confidence in approaching people I like because I now have a better idea of what they are truly like behind the scenes. In many ways, I felt like an undercover reporter. Of course, I felt obligated to disclose my identity from the very beginning, and I did (through some highly creative ways) but no one believed me.</p>