Roommate screening questions
 

So my son is hoping to attend college in the fall. He is trying to pick a roomie out of the thousands that are incoming freshmen.

He is failing.

I suggested some open questions:



If you had to be a member of the cast of Animal House, who would you be?

When you attend a football game, what is priority: beer, girls, the GAME?

What would you do if I showed up with a suitcase full of LSD and $10,000?

Any other good questions?

ask about his sister

They probably won’t know what Animal House was; or maybe that is the test?

Sister! Good one.

When I had roommates in college I wish I had the opportunity to find out if they were:
Smoker?
Neat or messy? Do you wash or leave dishes in the sink.
Do drugs?
Stay up all hours?
Like parties?
Are you willing to help clean on a regular basis
Play your music loud or wear earbuds instead?

Tell me about your parents...

When drunk do you pee in the sink?

In university, we rented a waterfront house in Victoria, BC.

To pay the rent, we always had room mates, some of which I am still friends with.

The question my girlfriend (now wife) and I would always ask was if they watched Star Trek... we didn’t let in the trekkies. We had a trekky once and they would dominate the tc with that crap for hours...

Try these questions:

- Do you have a girlfriend?

- Is she hot and crazy?

- She's not going to school here? What are her plans?

- Do you expect her to get lonely and start hitting on her boyfriend's roommate because her boyfriend is never around to answer the phone, all the while she's doing her nanny gig on the east coast and calling at all hours of the night crying and wondering when said roommate will be getting on a plane and joining her for spring break debauchery in Florida and then maybe running off to the islands because who needs to spend all that money on college anyway when two people can live free of the encumbrances of Western civilization in remote areas of the Caribbean??

Or maybe these:

- Do you have any pets?

- Are they warmblooded?

- Are you sure you know where they are?

- What's your pet's "safe word" command to stop constricting around the neck of other people?

- The hot girls next door want to know if we've seen their kitten. Know anything about that?

Or how about this set of questions:

- What's your major?

- Psychology? What's with all the pointy sharp things in scabbards in those three suitcases?

- Why are you attending anger management classes again? And did you get your meds today?

- What's with all the blood on the floor?



Just call all those "lessons learned the hard way"...

Fan,
You sound like me.

We're not trying to scare the shizzz out of them, just find a good one!

Funny!

I'm heading down to happy hour.... wanna go :D?

Do you have a girlfriend?
If so, will she be staying here every weekend?
Will she be bringing any hot friends?
Because, if she's going to stay here, she needs to bring hot friends.

If you were really, really drunk and woke up naked with a sore butt, what would you do?

edit- delete- Do you prefer Ginger Lynn or Jake Gyllenhaal type movies? scratch that... ask

simply-

Do you like movies about gladiators?

screening. Hell, when I went to college and lived in the dorms, I'd get a letter telling me who my roommate was and then I'd meet him when we both got there. None of them were horrible. I didn't get along with the first one and I think he moved out after a semester. I think he drank himself out of school. The second one was OK to hang out with, but I think he went home at the end of the year. The third one lasted for the next two years and was decent. Then I moved into an apt with one of the guys that had lived next door and we were roommates for several years until I left the area.

^^^^ Yep...this is foreign to me too. As a freshman entering dorm life... it's like screening yer cell mate ;). Unless you moved into a frat house, you lived in "very spartan" dorms for two years... freshman had zero choice... but then you could pick your roommate thereafter. Coed dorms did not exist .... but sleepovers were "not seen" :D

Hey man ... you got any good weed ;)?

It was Animal House all over my campus back then...

I think we may have been able to request a roommate, but since I didn't know anyone going to the school....

We did have coed dorms. But I think they were divided by floor or something like that. Sleepovers were forbidden, but yeah, they happened plenty. The worst was if there was a firedrill during a sleepover. You'd then here them from under the covers or whatever your hiding spot checking each room to ensure that the girls had left. That's what I heard, because I'd never break the rules.

First two years of college we had to live on campus in a dorm. After that I moved off campus in rentals.

My dorm roommates were "chosen" for me - in other words - I didn't have a say-so - let alone know who they were until our first day meeting them in person.

Both times things worked out fine, outside the usual little skirmishes typical of living with another person tends to create.

My first year's roommate came from Tampa where his parents ran the Lafeyette Electronics franchise and he had this HUGE reel to reel stereo and would play ELP at high volume- which was pretty cool.

Second year it was more Neil Young and Bob Dylan category.

Those were some great times.

It's a great opportunity for your son, LWJ - no matter how it turns out. Don't be afraid to spin the wheel and let 'er rip.....;)

Didn't know anyone got to choose their roommates. When I started engineering school (Ga Tech) in the early 90s, my roommates were assigned to me. One of my freshman roommates is still a good friend 27 years later. None of the others were terrible, though one worked night shift at a UPS warehouse and would come back in the middle of the night and turn on the TV - there wasn't a lot on, so I remember waking up to dolphin chirps as he watched 'Flipper'. In art school after that (CCS), my roommates were again assigned. None were terrible, two were in my program and one was extremely good at what he did (he went on to design the FJ Cruiser), and it's always good to have someone better than you are around when you're working to get better, too. All of them were about 4 years younger than me, which at that age felt like about 20 years younger. That was only first year - after that I got an apartment with a friend I met my first semester, who is also still a great friend, 22 years later.

One of my undergrad degrees is in HR. They taught interviewing skills and had a section on questions people thought were good indicators of success for the candidate. It turns out the data shows there are no specific questions that have any validity in predicting success of a candidate. The data shows the whole interview process itself is pretty hit or miss as far as selecting successful candidates, but there are NO set questions that can be asked cold that have any value in predicting success. The key to candidates being successful is a commitment by both the employer and employee to make the relationship work.

I would think the same thing would hold true for roommate searching. Rather than trying to figure out good personality fit by asking strange probing questions, you would be better off focusing on concrete personal habits and goals. Do you drink? Use drugs? Cool with MJ? How seriously do you plan to take school? What activities are you interested in getting involved in at school? What clubs/sports did you participate in during high school? How clean are you? Are you planning to cook or use the school's meal plan? What is your major and career plan? You still won't know whether the kid is a good kid who can make a roommate situation work, but you'll be able to weed out those with automatic disqualifiers.

My older son went to a well regarded local liberal arts school where he was matched up with a kid who looked great on paper. The school was a little expensive and had a big alumni network, so it drew from a demographic that was predisposed toward having highly motivated kids. The roommate had been recruited to be on the basketball team, mother was an HR consultant, dad owned a landscaping business, and he was a business major. Nice looking kid, polite and quiet but seemed well spoken. He turned out to be a major pot head and turned their room into the burner lounge for the dorm. The first time I visited there were clothes and debris on the floor ankle deep. I started yelling at my kid, only to realize belatedly, that the mess really was all the roommate's fault. He made freshman year miserable for my son. He didn't tell me until the year was over or I would have done something.

Sophomore year my son roomed with three friends in an on-campus apartment. They spent the rest of their time in the upper class apartments together and he ended up having a good college experience. The four of them still get together. The ex-roommate lasted half way through first semester of sophomore year and dropped out. He kind of disappeared but may have gone to work as a laborer for his dad.

I would think your son will have a good roommate experience with anyone who isn't into drugs, plans to be reasonably diligent in his studies, and is planning to get involved in some sort of school activities. If you get a positive response to those three questions, the rest is just details.

My third year in college we were allowed to live off campus and I ended up sharing a 4 bedroom house with 3 other dudes. The bedrooms were all converted to have their own HVAC but we shared the kitchen and bathroom.

Every day at noon we'd sit in the living room together and watch "All My Children". And once in a while someone would make a tuna casserole - which we referred to as a tuna bomb. And it would be shared.

Other than that everyone pretty much went their own way and we got through the year without any issues.

The following year I moved to one of the two rental apartments on the second floor. They each had outside staircases for entry/exit.

I stayed one more year before getting my degree, and that last year I shared a cottage on the Ornamental Horticulture Department greenhouse facility property with another OH senior and received rent in exchange for watching over the complex on the weekends and after hours on weekdays. We had the keys to the greenhouse complex and could go through them anytime we wanted, which was pretty cool when you wanted to impress a date. Plus that was where some of the labs were conducted for our courses so on those occasions, we'd just casually stroll over from the cottage just before class was to start..."Yo everyone...what up?" :D

I was probably an ideal roommate because I went home (my parent's home) every weekend to surf.

I mean EVERY weekend.

A few from experience:

Do you require pitch black and 100% silence to sleep? Or can you sleep through a nuclear attack like me?

If you had to have a room too hot, or too cold, which would you prefer? If we lived in Houston and our windows opened onto the the industrial dryer vent for the dorm, do you think it would be a good idea to regularly turn off the AC and open the windows so we can get some "fresh air"?

Are you into taxidermy? Ever stuffed a beaver?

My freshman dorm was un-airconditioned in Austin! No choice on roommate, mine was OK, but his had issues. I moved into the frat house after one semester in the dorm. Our fraternity supervisor happened to be the director of housing at UT so I magically got out of my unbreakable dorm contract mid-year :)

All my roommates after that were fraternity brothers and life long friends. They all got the short end of the stick with their roommate but at least they got their cars and motorcycles fixed for free.

I hate to say this, but even with rock solid questions, there is no substitute for grill to grill meeting to figure it out.

Everybody interviews well on paper and over the phone. It is a total crap shoot.

I chased the baseball dream before college so I never lived in a dorm. I found my roommates in college like everyone else in the '70's: physical message board, address and phone number, come and talk.

I met these three exactly that way. We knew in two minutes it was going to work. South Fork of the American. I am back left.

George is a no kidding Crazy Rich Asian, Blythe a very successful entrepreneur, Gary a surgeon.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1592417320.JPG

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1592417320.JPG

Great post, Paul.

Who took the photos? And where are they today?

The person you interview before entering freshman year.... might change... a LOT ;).

We "worked hard" and played hard on weekends....

But Sat & Sun on the basketball courts at noon was a given ... had to sweat it all back out before starting all over again :D

George's girlfriend, just a smoking hot Taiwanese woman who could not swim. She was not getting in the raft - her choice. You can see in the picture George is hamming it up for the hammer.

George is in Taiwan, Blythe still in the Bay Area and Gary is in New York. I think, it has been over a decade. I may have to fix that.

I think I may have a photo of me near that very same spot in very similar circumstances.

Not far from Chili Bar...I think. Pics are from 1979/80.

Monday's were my day off during the summer and I would borrow a raft and equipment and we'd head out. I had friends at OARS and we'd stay in Coloma.

The cool thing about George was that his father made him work even though they had all the money in the world.

We both worked as waiters in SF during the school year and George would always drive. He'd pick me up and we'd hit the circuit after work on weekends.

An amazing time.

My first year of college?....MI had just changed the drinking age to 18. My parents brought me to my new dorm/residence for the first year and we were met by keggers on every floor!
I still remember my father smiling and rolling his eyes as my mother tried to look away.
Fun times!
Learned how to party all day long...money well spent!

My Freshman and sophomore years, I don't remember getting a choice in roommates. People could and did swap roommates.

First year was OK. We were both engineers, he was a year ahead. Second year I was sophomore and he was freshman and we ended up with one of the large rooms. I knew his brother from engineering. He studied "Animal Science". He did not have to study much and spent most of his time screwing around.

Third year I went off campus. Found my roommate at the "off-campus" resource building.

After that, I've never had a "Roommate" I was not sleeping with...

Yep - Funny - And unfortunately all generated from real-world experience.

Like many of you, I played "room-mate roulette" when I first went to college and lived in the dorms my freshman year. Didn't exactly end well. Moved off campus, burned up some friendships with those I roomed with (stupid stuff on their part).

Last year of school got into an apartment with strangers again (weird apartment building - common kitchen/bathroom linked to four bedrooms, each with their own external entrance). First Friday night I'm coming back late from the engineering building to find cops at the apartment and a big party clearing out; one roommate in cuffs for dealing cocaine...