Today's roommate selection process is very different than when Dave and I went off to college. Like many of you, were were randomly assigned roommates. Mine was actually from Madison, the city our college was in. She was a train wreck of epic proportion and flunked out the first semester. Yet her parents didn't know what to do with her and they'd paid her housing fee in full so she just stayed in the dorms, drinking her way through to June. My guess is that they hoped she'd find herself a husband. Or a sugar daddy.
Kids today can take the luck of the draw or they can request specific roommates. They find these people through apps such as Roomsurf.com or Facebook groups set up for their specific college. The back-and forth is a lot like I imagine match.com to be. Except that once you commit to a roommate, you are tethered together for an entire academic year.
The first part of this is looking at the prospective roommate's Instagram feed. If you like that then you start texting and asking questions along the lines of: Are you going to rush? Do you drink? Do you play sports? Have you ever been outside of the US?
What has surprised me most about this ritual is the number of people who look for roommates prior to actually committing to the school they are roommate shopping for. Apparently this is common practice.
I actually think that roommates should be vetted based on clothing and shoe size. Have you seen how tiny those dorm closets are?! Sharing is caring.
