New technology allows freshmen at some schools to choose roommates

Meeting a new roommate is one of the notoriously stressful parts of a student's first year at college -- though it may be getting easier. A new program has personalized the process of roommate selection and gives students more control.

WebRoomz, an Internet venture employed by a handful of universities around the country, has pioneered a new wave of applications which allow incoming students to choose their roommates individually. With the help of these programs, students can take control of their room situations; universities which have adopted the system hope that it will increase first-year students' satisfaction in both their living situation and other areas of student life.

WebRoomz requires students complete a lengthy questionnaire about living habits and allows them to create a profile for their classmates to see. Students use screen names to hide their identities, and then e-mail each other requesting a roommate when the WebRoomz program indicates a match.

Over the summer, Tufts' Office of Residential Life and Learning evaluated Internet-based matching programs and started to assess their appropriateness at Tufts. According to Residential Life Director Yolanda King, the office will discuss programs with the TCU senate and solicit student opinion on their use.

Should the university pursue Internet-based matching, there are a number of options. The WebRoomz program is not cheap -- it costs $35,000 per school - prompting some schools to develop custom sites that allow incoming students to enter roommate-only chat rooms, view profiles and photos of classmates, as well as their future dorm rooms.

Emory University in Atlanta has become one of the main proponents of the new technology. The school used WebRoomz for the first time this summer to match incoming students with roommates and its website allows students to take a virtual tour of residence halls before deciding where they would like to live.

Like most universities, Tufts matches incoming freshmen with roommates based on a questionnaire that asks about living habits including smoking, floor gender preference, study habits, sleeping habits, and gauges interest in special housing options such as healthy living. Room assignments, which are determined manually, are based on the results of the questionnaire, and do not account for factors such as ethnicity or geography.

Anonymous matching has often created stress for first-year students. "I didn't know anything about my new roommate besides where she lived," said current sophomore Liz Newberg. "And you're nervous about meeting, because you're going to live with them and don't know them."

Some students find it difficult to answer the questionnaire about living habits before they set foot in a dorm. "I needed to come to a realization about what I wanted in a living situation," sophomore Shail Ghaey said. "You need time at college to figure it out."

Because much of a student's satisfaction with his or her first-year experience at college has to do with their living situation, King said that it is important to take steps toward more personalized programs that may make better dorm room matches.

No matter which selection process is used, however, much of a student's success with a first-year roommate can depend on how much the students are willing to compromise and allow for different living habits. "It's important to be open to new things, and to compromise about your living habits," Ghaey said. Newberg agreed. "I think my roommate and I got along well because we were honest and we communicated."