by BigFuture | Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
If your student is anything like millions of other college students, beginning their college journey will bring their first experience of sharing a living space with someone other than family. You and your student may be wondering how to find college roommates and how to enjoy living together once they're found. This new experience can be both fun and challenging.
The Benefits and the Challenges
Here are some of the things your student can expect:
- Benefits
- A built-in companion: Your student's roommate is new to college too, so they can learn how to navigate campus life together.
- Support: It's nice to have someone who can help with studying, encourage your interests, or bring your student soup when they're sick.
- New perspectives: Your student's roommate might introduce them to a different culture or new points of view.
- Shared activities and interests: Your student may have a roommate who likes to do the same things as they do.
- Potential Challenges
- Lack of privacy: Your student may not have the privacy they're used to and may have to seek out places like the library or coffee shop to get it.
- Lifestyle differences: If your student's roommate's habits, personality, or schedule are very different from your student's, it can be hard to adjust to living together.
Strategies for Success
Communicating often and openly is essential for any successful relationship. If your student needs help discussing something with their roommate, they should take advantage of the resources their college provides. Talking to a resident adviser (RA) is a good starting point.
Here are some tips to share with your student for maintaining a good relationship with their roommate:
Make rules and respect them: An effective strategy is coming to an agreement with roommates early in the year that sets the boundaries for how everyone will live together. For example, agreeing that if one of them is trying to study, the other won't blast music or record TV shows to watch later. After agreeing on the guidelines, it's important for everyone to respect them.
Compromise: Your student and their roommate won't agree on everything, so they'll both have to make some compromises. For instance, if one of them is messy and the other likes things neat, the untidy one should keep the shared areas of the room clean. And the neat one should learn to accept the untidiness in the other's personal area.
Show courtesy: If your student behaves politely to their roommate, the roommate is likely to follow that lead. Encourage your student to wish their roommate luck on an exam or ask if they can pick up something while your student is running errands. When sharing a living space with someone an interacting with them every day, it's important to stay on good terms. Our advice - your student should try their best to make their roommate happy that they wound up with your student.
Living harmoniously with someone requires communicating, compromising, and respecting differences. Learning these life skills may be the most valuable lessons your student will learn outside the classroom. Sharing a space can make your student a new and more open person, and they'll learn about themselves in the process.
Explore majors, find scholarship opportunities and explore planning for college resources at BigFuture.Collegeboard.org!
BigFuture is a free and personalized set of comprehensive digital resources that help students take a productive next step after high school. Students can use BigFuture tools and resources to plan for college, pay for college, and explore careers. Families can visit the BigFuture Parent Resources Center for even more resources.
