<p>I agree somewhat with what others have said. You should at least spend your first year with a roommate. If you find you don’t like it, then as a sophomore it will be easier to get a single, or you can just get an apartment. </p>
<p>I spent my first year with a roommate, but I don’t agree with others that having a roommate is some life-changing experience, or something that will teach life skills. Honestly, will you ever find another time in your life where you share a bedroom with a complete stranger? No-- living with someone in an apartment/house, or sleeping with a loved one in the same bed, are completely different experiences from having a college roommate. </p>
<p>It’s true that having a roommate teaches compromising skills among other things-but compromising skills can be learned in many other places. Having a roommate is a unique experience, but it is does NOT teach anything that can only be learned by having a roommate. It is not true that having a roommate gives one some kind of essential wisdom for life that can only be acquired by having a roommate. </p>
<p>Socially, having a roommate can be a benefit. Your roommate may turn out to be your best friend, or someone you’re merely considerate around. But your social life will not be dead if you have a single. You simply have to push yourself to be out there more.</p>
<p>We parents could scare you away from college completely with a thread on horror stories from college. Do not choose a college based on the dorm situation, there are far more important reasons to choose a school. The only way to completely avoid negative situations of any kind is to not live- but then you would miss out on so many good experiences. Life is a series of compromises, keep a perspective on the important ones. BTW, that roommate thread is of interest because of the rarity of such problems and you will note they did not ruin anyone’s life.</p>
<p>First of all thank you everyone for the loads of great advice; this was something I had not expected!
I certainly will not choose a college based on its dorms. However, I raised this point for several reasons. Before listing them, I’d like to tell you that I am not at all in anyway, anti-social, and that is why I was concerned about what my college would think about me if I would opt for a single.
Here goes:</p>
<ol>
<li>I don’t have siblings, so rarely have had to share my bed, bathroom, toys, or any other personal belongings. That is why I get really p issd off if someone insists to borrow something of mine, or worse use it without permission.</li>
<li>I hate using public toilets, or toilets used by more than one or two other people. I also spend a little longer in toilets, and hate it if someone knocks on the toilet door.</li>
<li>If my roommate turns out to practice weird, unusual rituals, that would be really hard for me. Also if he’s going to sleep with someone else in the bed next to mine every other night, week, or month, then that too will be intolerable…</li>
<li>I like privacy.</li>
</ol>
<p>as an only child I’m a bit miffed by the rather negative response that this thread has attracted- as someone said earlier, different people want different things out of college. For some, it may be that living in a room to yourself will help you make a better adjustment to college (which is a huge change in and of itself), and that it just makes life easier. </p>
<p>I lived in a dorm for a week during a program in '06, and to be honest I was a bit turned off of having a roommate for the following reasons:
My roommate and I had nothing in common (he was a jock, I’m a major nerd)
I like to get to bed early (aka sometime between 10:30-12:00), whereas my roommate was content to eat Chinese food until 2:00 in the morning
It was kinda disquieting to have to use the same toilets as about 20 other people
It was loud
My personality can be somewhat neurotic/nervous at times, so I was a bit on edge that time</p>
<p>Now, that being said, I can attribute my poor experience there to two things, mainly that roommate assignments were totally random, and that this was my first time on my own for more than about two days or so. As for college? From a maturity aspect, I know I need to live away to get used to it, so I’ll be a resident at whatever school I go to (even UMBC, which is 10 minutes from my house), and that in all likelihood I’ll end up with a roommate.</p>
<p>Am I nervous about this? Yes. Do people have reasons to be a bit frightened at the prospect of living with complete strangers and sharing bathrooms? Certainly. So really, I don’t see why y’all should be harassing apples like this…</p>
<p>Well that explains it all, apples! I had to laugh actually because some of your thoughts describe almost similar to my younger brother who has his own very quirky habits. You’ll be a very interesting roommate for someone :)</p>
<p>1) So you’re not used to sharing… you could get in the habit of inviting your friends to your room at home and let them play around with it. Try doing it for a short amount of time and then increase the time as you get more and more comfortable with people in your space. Offer your laptop to somebody to check an e-mail quickly or lend your iPod to listen to music for a while. Remember what we learned in preschool? My BFF was an only child too but she really learned how to share because she was lonely and she found sharing her possessions was a way to make great friends.</p>
<p>2) My brother is totally into NOT using public toliets- he won’t use our school bathroom! Somehow he managed to live when he went to a summer program at BU for 2 weeks… Believe me, people don’t use bathrooms as often as you think because there are bathrooms ALL over the campus. Also who cares how much time you spend in the toliet? If the stall’s occupied, then it’s occupied. Plus you’ll hardly be in the same bathroom (even on the same floor) with more than one person at a time. I’ve always managed to have the entire hall bathroom to myself when I shower after gym…somehow. But just don’t dance naked :)</p>
<p>3) You’ll live. Just speak up if you’re not comfortable with what your roommate does when you’re around. Again, this is where compromises come in handy.</p>
<p>4) The two of you will eventually find times in that 24 hour period to have the room to yourself. Just grab your class schedules and anything else you have and compared…see when your roommate’s very busy and USE that time for privacy.</p>
<p>My brother is a bit neurotic too but he’ll live. He even freaked out when my mom told him that his laundry was in the public laundromat because our washer had broken out. It went like this:
Bro: WHAT?! You put my clothes in a public washer?!
Mom: Not with OTHER people’s clothes… (my bro gets agitated) Honey, what are you doing you do for college?
Bro: I’ll live in a frat house.
Mom: Ew, and put your clothes in washers filled with beer and vomit? (Bro shuts up)</p>
<p>You’ll eventually adjust to a lot of things. It may seem impossible but time will help you adjust to all kind of weird stuff.</p>
<p>Apples, maybe you should live at home and commute, if there is an acceptable college or university nearby. If you do that for a year or two, your housing options on campus will be greater as a transfer student. Very few schools have the freshmen dorm situation that you want.</p>
<p>Finally, i’ve started getting positive responses!
Thanks a lot everyone.
i can’t commute, because of the universities i’m applying to are away from home.
According to my situation, here is my option:</p>
<p>If my university requires me to live on campus for at least the freshman year (as far as I know, the universities I’m applying to do), then i can request for a single, or a room next to the stairs.
otherwise i’ll have to live with a roommate, and use a public toilet. but can apply the numerous tips advised on this thread.
hopefully when the living-on-the-dorms restriction ends, I’ll rent an apartment near college.</p>
<p>are there any other suggestions that add to this?</p>
Er, no. I have a single room (which I requested) and my “social development” is going just fine. Of course, one of the reasons I appreciate my privacy is that I don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to have my boyfriend over… oh, wait, did I just write that? That said, I do share a bathroom. It’s not bad at all. Honestly.</p>
<p>i went to boarding school and got placed with the roommate from HELL (think violin practice at 2 am and whimpering unless there were enough nightlights to light up the universe). i was not even able to try and compromise with her because she spoke very little english and made minimal efforts to communicate back. part of my difficulties stemmed from the fact that, like you, i am an only child who has never had to share a room or bathroom. after that year, i got to live with my best friend,which people caution against, but it worked out great for us. </p>
<p>living in a single or divided double became a priority for me in my college search, and i found that there are quite a few options out there. however, i did a four week summer program between junior and senior years, and we got along GREAT, so i was prepared to have a roommate again in college. </p>
<p>i can understand wanting a single, and although i hope you can maybe take a risk on a roommate, i would say that if this is really important to you, you should focus on that rather than having a private bathroom. because lets just be realistic for a moment: a college freshman who wants a single room AND a private bathroom? i dont mean to be harsh, but that is just not going to happen.</p>
<p>good luck! let us know how it all turns out!</p>
<p>1) If you are a freshman at Ohio State and get your material in early, if you are a freshman and ask to live on the north or west end of campus, you may end up in a suite type of room with more than two people but a bathroom just for your room - I think. (I think the south end freshman rooms are doubles.)
2) I was once an RA, and a freshman girl on my hall was astounded to find out she had been given a single room. She said she had listed on her rooming application that she would prefer a single. She had assumed she’d get a double but through some quirk of room shuffling, she ended up with a single room. She told me at the beginning of the year that she sort of wished she had a roommate. All of the other freshmen on the floor had an automatic buddy to go to the dining hall with, and she would come down to the doubles area of the floor around mealtimes to find someone because she didn’t want to risk going in alone and finding no one to sit with. I’m sure that after the first month or so she appreciated the extra privacy, and this single room did not come with a private bath or anything snazzy - it was just a small single room. This was at another large midwestern university.<br>
3) My niece’s college had a new dorm and found themselves with extra rooms last year and even freshmen were allowed to request a “super single” which was a double room to themselves. A few of the freshmen actually got these rooms. They had to pay extra, but it was possible.</p>
<p>My point is, it really will depend on the college you choose to attend. And on luck. You could conceivably get a single room or at least not have to share a community bathroom. </p>
<p>But roommates and community bathrooms can be just fine.</p>
<p>I was thrown in with two roommates my freshman year and we had a lot of fun together. (We were close to the same size so we even shared clothes and shoes.) Neither of them were people I would have chosen as friends if they hadn’t been my roommates, but we got along fine. And I honestly didn’t mind the community bathroom - it let you meet the other women on the floor.</p>
<p>My university has three types of dorms: traditional, cluster, and apartment. Freshman never get into the apartment dorms. The rules state no incoming freshman are allowed in those buildings, and one of them is for graduate/professional students only. Freshman end up in either the traditional or cluster buildings. There are not that many singles. They tend to be all selected before they even look at the incoming freshman applications. Most freshman end up in doubles. My university always has a waiting list for rooms, and so, you don’t get a super single.
I survived one year with a roommate in the room next to the girl’s bathroom. It is not that bad. Many schools will ask you to fill out a survey before they place you with a roommate.</p>
<p>Ahh, I have a similar issue. The roommate thing doesn’t bother me at all, because I have 4 sisters. I’m used to sharin geverything I own, so it’s not an issue.</p>
<p>The bathroom thing? I may actually base my college decision on it. One of the colleges I’m applying to offers honors housing. I’d get the apartment style housing as a freshman, which is the two person to one room with an attached bathroom. The other (BETTER) school has separate honors floors in the normal dorms, but the rooms are all traditional, with two person rooms and a communal bathroom for each hall.</p>
<p>I haven’t used a school bathroom in years, and went a four day summer service project without using the bathroom once. I have all sorts of stomach problems- maybe partly because of all this- but I’m honestly considering going to the other school only because of the bathrooms. I feel so pathetic =/</p>
<p>Depends where you are, but here in California I’m pretty sure the UCs and whatever CSU have housing require to to stay there for your freshman year. It’s not that big of a deal. You get to meet a ton of new people and start building your new social network. I look forward to dorm life.</p>
<p>if you are filthy rich then you could buy your own house or something next to school. but you would have to be filthy rich… something most of us are not.</p>
<p>Don’t you want to be married or in a committed, cohabiting relationship someday? You’ll do a lot of sharing under those circumstances, and learning to negotiate and compromise is key to sustaining a long relationship.</p>
<p>Think of a roommate as a test run, with little or no emotional involvement. You’ll find out how different people live, and learn how to tone down your own annoying habits. Breaking down some of your inhibitions is important at this stage of your life, before you turn into a middle-aged hermit with cats and a computer. ;)</p>
<p>I completely sympathize with apples. I too had a horror of sharing a room with a stranger (even though I have three siblings). A big factor in my decision to go to Hampshire College (mentioned in an earlier post in this thread) was that almost all the rooms were singles. I requested a “quiet” hall, which meant my hallmates were mostly third and fourth year students who were really into their studies and not into partying, and had a lot of wisdom to impart to a 17 year old first year! I loved having my own room!</p>
<p>Something to remember is that most of the time, if you’re nice to them they’re nice to you (note the “most of the time”). Smile when you first meet them! You have no idea what a big change this can make. </p>
<p>Not only is the living on campus requirement probably going to hinder you living alone, but (depending on where you are) living off-campus can be EXTREMELY expensive…moreso than on-campus. You would have to live with others to be able to afford it. I would encourage you to live on-campus and just try it…if you don’t like your roommate, you can always switch rooms!</p>