College Housing Decisions: Choosing New Roommates

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At the end of the freshman year, one housing decision you have to face is whom to room with. For those of you who had no real connection with your freshman year roommate(s), the decision to move on may be easy. For others, though, particularly those of you facing the prospect of keeping most of the group together but ditching one or two of your current roommates, this can be an awful time.

There is really no magic formula about how to "break up" with one or more of your roommates. There are all sorts of valid reasons why you might need to jettison one or more of your present group. Maybe you need to break into triples or quads. Maybe you're merging two rooms together, but don't have room for everyone. Or maybe it's because you just don't want to tolerate the habits or personality quirks of one or more of your present roommates any longer.

It is your right, after all, to choose with whom you want to room. Roommate breakups can be done the right way or the wrong way, though. Even done well, they may cause some temporarily hurt feelings or bruised egos, but these can and will be overcome with time. Done badly, however, roommate breakups can become the stuff of legend.

"Be honest about your plans from the beginning," Lyndsee warns. "I ended up losing some friends over housing choices. It can be hard not to hurt someone's feelings in the process."

"One of the biggest mistakes I made in college had to do with choosing a room­mate for sophomore year," Zoe agreed. "In our first freshman semester, my
roommate and another friend and I decided that we would all live together. As the year wore on, the roommate and I grew apart, and eventually the other friend and I told her that we didn't want to share a triple. This was a very painful conversation, probably not handled well, and created a rift between my freshman roommate and me that was never healed. In fact, we almost never spoke again during the next three years. It is something I still regret."

"Roommate decisions for sophomore year are very much a continuation of the rooming combinations, and new friendships from freshman year," Tom ex­plained. "The simple advice here is to establish strong foundations for friendships in your freshman year. Then, rooming situations will take care of themselves."

"Choose someone who has similar study habits, sleep habits, and interpretations of cleanliness, in addition to being a friend," Jim added. "Traveling with someone over a break can really help you to decide whether you get along well enough to live together."

The best advice we can give you about this is to communicate clearly, directly, and as soon as possible with those who will be left behind. Choose one or two people from the suite to have the conversation with the roommates who will be left behind, rather than convening a summit meeting to announce the news. Having everyone there heightens the tension, formalizes the discussion, and makes the whole thing seem more like an inquisition than a conversation.