Perfecting the Process of Pairing College Roommates: A State of the Art Review

The entirety of higher education is facing new budgeting and costly cuts to essential entities of the institutions. One of the most expensive and fiscally-beneficial parts of most college campuses are their residential facilities. With the thousands of universities in the country come hundreds of thousands of residence halls, all filled with pairs of roommates. Apart from a handful of them that self-select who they room with, the majority of college roommates are randomly paired using a computerized questionnaire that does its best to put two random individuals together in hopes that they are compatible as roommates. This state of the art review considers what research has been done to look into what makes the perfect college roommate. If this process can be improved, hopefully the attrition of on-campus living will decrease and residential students across the country will be happier and more content with their living situations. It explores what techniques have been used to study roommate relationships, what has been found regarding compatibility of roommates, and what can be done in the future to continue to perfect this roommate-pairing process