Gone are the days of anxiously waiting to meet your new roommates on the first day of college, wondering what they’ll be like and if you’ll become friends. Now, with websites like Facebook and URoomSurf.com, you’ll probably show up knowing where they went on vacation this summer, their dog’s name and whom they took to prom last year.
With endless amounts of personal information at their fingertips, students are opting more often to choose a roommate based on online compatibility, rather than leaving the decision to the University’s random selection process.
Intimidated by the prospect of living with someone she disliked, freshman Arielle Camhi chose to room with someone she met through a mutual friend.
“I feel more comfortable living with someone who I know I get along with,” Camhi said. “I think it’s more important to have a roommate with a similar background and interests.”
After joining the “GWU Class of 2014” Facebook group, freshman Marina Rostein also found roommates she felt she clicked with.
“I definitely feel that I’ve gotten to know my self-picked roommates over the last eight months . . . better than if I had gone random,” Rostein said.
Out of about 2,300 first-year students who applied for housing this year, 624 requested a specific roommate on the application, Director of Housing Programs Seth Weinshel said.
While she doesn’t dislike the random selection process, Rostein said having roommates who will potentially become her friends is something she may not have found if she had allowed the University to choose her roommates for her.
And students who choose to have their roommates assigned don’t always find themselves in an amicable living situation.
“My one roommate and I were complete and total opposites of the other two,” said senior Ali Lazarus, who lived in a Thurston quad her freshman year. “We tried to bond… but eventually gave up and barely ever spoke.”
Freshman Sunny Shih, who created a “GWU Class of 2014 Roommate Finder” group on Facebook, said sites that help students find potential roommates are a “godsend.” While not everyone thinks the internet is the best place to meet the person you’ll be sharing your personal space with all year, students said tight-living situations work better when there is respect.
“Facebook can be fake,” sophomore Patrick Madl said. Madl chose to be randomly paired with his freshman-year roommates and said it was a success.
“My roommates and I were nothing alike, but we had a great time,” he said. “With one I would argue over who was the best rapper alive, with another it would be about who made the best maple syrup and with the other it was over the Obama administration.”
While Madl said there was tension at times, he and his roommates respected each other.
“We aren’t living at home anymore,” he said. “We are in college and have to adapt to living with others. Going random helps that.”
