I’m having lunch on Sunday with six of my old dorm mates! Graduated in 1980.
I also get together regularly with friends from my home town - one I met when we were three; the others I’ve known since grade school.
I married a dormmate who lived a floor below me. Another dormmate currently lives with us. Mr R’s brother & his wife were also our dormmates.
I’m still friends with several people and we’ve been in each other’s weddings and are aunts & uncles to their kids.
My spouse has remained friends with his college dorm mates from freshman year for all these years. (He is 50.) We have gone on vacations with the family of one of his friends. This friend was the person my husband trusted most a few years ago when he needed someone with whom to talk. We get together with another group maybe once a year- there was a great reunion this summer of the four friends and their wives (three of the wives also went to Vassar) at one of their houses.
I did not get along well with my roommate, but in retrospect, that was more my fault than hers. I spent almost all my time from October of freshman year at college with a boyfriend with whom I broke up senior year when I decided I did not want to marry him, so while I had other really nice friends at college, I did not invest as much time into those friendships— and the two college friends with whom I have most kept in touch were one from my upperclass dorm and one who was never in my dorm. My closest two friends, though, are from elementary/junior high/high school- and oddly, the friend I spend most time with now was not my very closest friend back in high school. We grew even closer as adults.
I think that friendships vary person to person, and whether they come from the dorm or elsewhere at college varies person to person, and also can be a combination of some from the dorm and some from other sources.
Our freshman dorms were coed with the rooms going boy/girl/boy/girl. In my hall there was my room, a guy friend next to me and two girl friends next to him. I married a friend from college who was in another dorm. My boy neighbor married the sister of the girl in the room next to him (she would come up to visit and they started dating.)
We live several states away but are still great friends - we each have 3 kids the same ages and sexes and the kids are best friends too. 
We see each other as much as possible, visiting each other over breaks (my family lives near them and hers new us!) and going on vacation together. Our oldest Ds are both seniors and have I think 2 schools that overlap on their college lists but I don’t think they will end up together.
@thumper1 My experience was mixed and I’m still friends with some while maintaining long distance relations with others due to geographical difference.
@CupCakeMuffins my guess is most of us had mixed experiences.
Last summer, I attended a HS reunion…but one of the folks there was also a college friend. Probably one of the people i care most about. He lives across the country and we don’t see each other very often. But we do email or chat at least once every couple of weeks.
We spent five days in our hometown, a place where neither of us has lived since HS graduation, and had so much fun. There were other friends there as well…but the highlight was this long term buddy.
Our lives have taken some twists and turns for sure, but it’s nice to have those connections.
Only one of my college roommates lasted a whole year. The first was a friend from high school and she quit after the first semester to get married. We are both back in our hometown and I run into her now and then. I did not keep up with the rest of them. There was a group who ran around together (the guys played intramural sports together and the GF’s hung out) and I just reconnected with them a few years ago on FaceBook, although I haven’t been able to make the little reunions they have had. I also broke up with my BF senior year when I decided I didn’t want to marry him. Most of the other couples are still together.
I roomed freshman year with my BF from high school who is still among my closest friends today. I married the cutest guy on our hall. His roommate was our best man. We are all still pretty close today, but those three were my inner circle of friends my entire time in college. I didn’t feel I needed any more than them.
I find this interesting. I had one roommate for 3 college years but we have never seen each other since. It’s too bad but our respective boyfriends at the time got into a huge fight and we went our separate ways. I was not close to any other friends in college.
My college roommate and I graduated from both high school and college together. She is one of my closest friends and confidants. I have four or five other close friends from college whom I still consider to be “go-to” people in times of need.
I’m closer to my high school friends.
My freshman year roommate is a bit of an oddball, but we got along well even though we didn’t end up rooming together after that. We exchanged cards for years and we always enjoy seeing each other at reunions.
My sophomore year group was the world’s most disfunctional group. One went home mid-year, one I don’t believe ever said a word to me. One I used to run into when I was in grad school. She was pretty normal, but spent most of her time out of the room with a boyfriend.
My junior year group of three I still see two at reunions and we post on each other’s facebook pages. I’ve visited the closest one and had dinner with her when she was passing through the area. The third one - who I roomed with senior year - I’ve lost touch with although we sent cards for years.
My close group of friends actually came from honors English freshman year - a class of about 15 kids in a huge university. First day of classes, we all bonded in a way that has kept us friends to this day. It was weird and special, lol.
Dorms are crapshoots. You might become friends, you might not. There are a lot of ways to meet people on campus. You have to have something in common to at least draw you to the same place, whether its living arrangements, major, whatever. From there it’s up to the people involved.
I am closest to my two friends from intermediate/middle school. Sadly I haven’t kept in close contact with friends from college or law school.
My S and D are both still friendly with the kids they attended college with. Several of the women D lived with are folks she was friends with in HS.
I do find it interesting that the OP has not resurfaced nor given any replies to several queries about how OP relates to college room mates or more info about why the inquiry.
I was a community college transfer who was placed on a dorm floor full of other transfer students (all female). The college was smart to do that as several of us became good friends.
The only one I have remained in touch with though was my college best friend. We actually met in the floor bathroom while doing hair/makeup for sorority rush a few days after we moved in. Ended up pledging the same sorority and rooming together in the dorm. We have seen each other several times in the last few years and it’s always as if we had seen each other the day before. I only wish we didn’t live 700 miles apart!
I don’t keep in touch with any of them. We got along OK, but most of these were friendships of a time and place. No kindred spirits. A few I kept in touch with for about 5 years after graduation, but people stop writing or sending cards after a while. I’ve moved many times and don’t live anywhere near my college or high school. So no chance of getting together in person or running into each other by chance. I guess I’m more of a loner–very few long-term friends at all. And no really close/intimate ones.
Two of my kids–the ones who went to small LACs–made some good friends in college. The three who went to big state u.? Not so much. Their high school friends are their best friends.
One of my freshman roommates from 40 years ago moved 500+ miles from the school to my city about a decade after I did, and we have lived about two miles apart since then. We get together at least once a month and email much more frequently than that. I had a quad, and I have not stayed in close touch with the other two women. I really appreciate having so much shared history and touchstones from our youth.
In October, I went to a reunion for the program I was in (we all lived in the same four dorms that were part of a much larger university) and was amazed how while most of us hadn’t seen each other for decades we had so many shared memories of living in the dorm and reconnected so easily.
I feel badly my D didn’t have the same experience. She really liked her freshman roommate, but she transferred, and my D never found other close friends in the dorm.
My freshman roommate and I could not have been more different, but ended up being a perfect match and we lived together 3 of 4 years. We still stay in touch but have not seen each other in years. My college didn’t/doesn’t have a football team. I often wonder if I would see more of my college friends, if we had an event like a game to go to.
I think good advice for college freshmen is to “find their people”. Sometimes it will be their dorm-mates, or maybe friends from their major or a club/sport. I had a lot of friends from my major (biochemistry) because we were taking the same classes at the same time, in long labs together and studied together. When my son graduated with a degree in History, I asked him where his “History” friends were and he didn’t have any.
I have a group of about a dozen dorm friends who are still close. In many ways, we grew up together during those years and built lasting bonds in the process, but some of us have actually become closer much like siblings who become closer after they leave the family nest and learn to appreciate each other more. We’ve scattered geographically, but whether it’s been a wedding, divorce, funeral, great life achievement, serious illnesses, etc., we have been there for each other. I also met who turned out to be my best friend at orientation and we ending up in business together.
I consider these people family in every way except blood. Dysfunctional at times, yes. Isn’t every family? We know all of each other’s faults, quirks, and skeletons, drive each other a little crazy sometimes, but still care about and support each other when the chips are down. It’s a pretty special thing IMO and I know it was completely luck of the draw.
All my closest friends are from middle school to high school days. The friends from colleges were just friends during college. I got along with all my roommates, ate with them and played with them ( didn’t study with them because I almost never studied, and my major was very different from theirs), but were never close enough to share deeply.
It is so interesting to read about the different experiences. I have several very good college friends, almost all of whom lived in the same freshman dorm. One lived across the hall from me and we talk at least once a week; others I still see but communicate much less frequently. I don’t keep in touch with either my freshman or sophomore roommates. We also still see a group of my husband’s college housemates, vacationing together at least every other year.
I also still have a group of HS friends that I keep up with. Only a couple from grad school and our first neighborhood, however.
But I am one of those people that doesn’t let friends drift away that easily. Of course there are many friendships that have faded over time. I agree that kids should not be led to believe that college is the best four years of their lives or that friendships made will last forever. That can be a lot of pressure.