
For Yalies, it’s a universal experience: as your finger hovers over the button that will unveil your freshman-year housing, you utter a silent prayer that your roommate will be a kind, fun and normal person.
You plead to the powers that be that you will get along, or better yet, even become friends. You don’t necessarily wish to succumb to the overly romanticised tales of freshman-roommates-turned-soul-ties who wind up the maids of honour or best men at one another’s weddings, but you can’t help but wonder: what will your relationship look like in a year’s time? Will this be a moment you zealously look back upon, or cringe at the thought of? As the page refreshes and their name appears on your screen, you feel it wash over you, and try to picture your future with your new cohabitant.
For freshmen, your roommate is the beginning of your college experience. They are amongst the first people you meet, and are the last person you see as you settle into your Twin XL bed, the dizzying array of emotions of move-in day descending over you. Though Yale’s housing form doesn’t advertise the perfect pairing — asking that freshmen keep an “open mind and remain flexible” — the form’s extensive questioning of your lifestyle habits and preferred living arrangements impel a sense of faith in Yale’s matching capabilities. Theoretically, you wouldn’t be paired with someone wholly dissimilar to you, so you must have something in common, so everything should work out fine, right? Setting out to write this article, I wanted to find out from my peers: how compatible are Yale’s freshmen roommates?
“I think it’d be best if you didn’t interview me about this, haha,” the text reads. I’ve spent the entire day sending cold messages and marching around campus asking my peers if I can interview them about their rooming experiences thus far. Some of them are entirely enthused: “I would love to. I love my roommate,” a friend of mine gushes. Others are hesitant: “I don’t want to be identified in any way, but yeah, things aren’t great right now.” A significant proportion, too, express a general apathy towards their living companion: “I mean, we’re friendly, and we live together, but that’s just kind of it.”
I promise each prospective candidate anonymous interviews to quell the inevitable apprehension that may come with stating one’s opinions in print. “I just want to know,” I tell each of them, “how well-matched do you believe you were?”
For those who voice an impassioned adoration for their roommate, I am struck by their expression of a synergistic idyll within their room. “We have our nightly debriefs together. He knows everything going on in my life right now,” one friend says. “We hang out a lot. We study and go out together, we have fun movie nights, we’ve decorated our suite together, and we celebrate birthdays together,” another classmate of mine shares.
Their stories reflect the idealised freshman roommate experience, the refrain of together echoing in my mind. For a moment, I feel a slight twinge of envy. I like my roommate; we get along fine, but we don’t have a bond like this.
Yet, in probing the nuances of such compatibility, the fortunate, well-matched pairings I hear of reveal themselves to be somewhat serendipitous rather than well-concocted by Yale’s housing system.
A survey sent out to WKND heelers, for instance, revealed that of freshmen who shared that they would qualify their roommate as a good or close friend, 76.5 percent have similar lifestyles — in terms of sleep schedules and socialising — and 94.1 percent similar hygiene and cleanliness practices. However, only 41.2 percent shared that they have similar interests, and a mere 23.5 percent expressed that they come from similar backgrounds. Yale’s housing form, after all, matches you based on your living arrangement preferences — any subsequent friendship that arises is a product of luck and happenstance rather than guarantee.
Yet, how does the opposite then happen, when freshmen are placed into a housing situation that can only be described as less-than-ideal?
“We don’t hang out unless we absolutely have to,” one unfortunate friend shares. This isn’t the first time we’ve spoken about their unfavourable roommate situation, and I’m certain it will not be the last. As we walk around campus, embroiled in conversation, we swivel our heads to ensure their roommate isn’t anywhere to be seen. Tension undercuts his words: “We have very different interests and very different lifestyles. Sometimes, I’ll walk into the room and he’ll just go, you’re here? That always gets me.”
As I listen to his story, I wonder — does Yale even match you well based on your living preferences? The same WKND survey showed that only 60.9 percent of all respondents have similar lifestyles to their roommates. This is not to say that for a living situation to work, one must be exactly congruent with their roommates — such that introverts or extroverts would not be able to room together, for example — but it does raise the question of how arbitrarily freshmen are placed together.
Other peers of mine, trembling at the risk of being identified, tell me more appalling horror stories off the record. My mouth hangs agape as I hear recounts of privacy transgressions, unilateral sexiling and tense confrontations. “We’re really well-matched on paper,” someone shares. “But I’m counting down the months until we’re done.”
As each tale elapses, my mind flashes back to sage advice shared by juniors, seniors and alumni as I entered Yale. “You don’t want to be around your roommate all the time.” A degree of separation, of maintaining individual spheres of existence, is crucial to preserving a healthy relationship through your already tumultuous first year.
Perhaps, then, it is those apathetic to their situation that are truly living well. Those who get along with their living companion, but don’t feel the impulse to spend every moment together and blur their lives into a singular mesh. After all, your first year of college is about self-discovery: how much can you learn about yourself when your life is inextricably intertwined with the person you sleep less than three feet away from?
In any case, Yale’s freshman matching capabilities prove to be, just like the housing lottery, a game of luck. For those who have formed a lifelong bond with their roommate, I commend you — you achieved what all of us secretly dreamed of. For those who have a pleasant roommate and a bearable situation, you perhaps are the true ideal. And for those entrenched in a room they wish they could escape, just remember: eight more months.