As a freshman assigned to a quad in Cobeen Hall last year, Ana Reyes had some reservations about meeting her randomly-selected roommates.

“I was worried that they wouldn’t be nice and that I would have to live with three horrible, mean girls during my freshman year,” Reyes said.

Luckily, Reyes said, the Office of Residence Life managed to match her with two roommates out of three who were compatible.

“I love my roommates,” she said. “Ever since day one, we’ve had good communication, which I think is what keeps the relationship strong.”

Now a sophomore, Reyes and two of her roommates from Cobeen, Katie Connolly and Vanessa Schoenecker, are sharing a triple room at Mashuda Hall.

“I think that it is amazing how well we get along and we didn’t know each other at all,” Connolly said. “Although we had problems with our fourth roommate last year, we managed to stick together.”

Schoenecker is surprised at how well the three roommates meshed.

“I honestly can’t believe that the random assignment was such as success,” she said. “Most people would never guess by looking at the three of us that we are roommates. We are so different, yet we live together so well.”

James McMahon, assistant vice president and dean of Residence Life, said the size of the university makes the random matching system the best choice for Marquette.

“There is no evidence that any matching system produces better roommate pairings than a random system at a university of our size,” McMahon said.

Though more direct matching methods may be used with ease at smaller schools, McMahon said Marquette’s size — this year’s freshman class is 1,700 — makes the implementation of these procedures difficult. Additionally, a student’s desire to live in one particular residence hall may supercede their desire to have a particular roommate. If compromises are made to ensure that two students room together, one or both may not be satisfied with the location.

McMahon said there is no record of the number of students who try to switch roommates during the academic year.

In the next year, the university may use a more direct way of introducing freshmen students to their classmates before they arrive on campus.

“One recently developed method is to connect incoming students online so they communicate with one another and then determine if they would like to be roommates,” McMahon said. “This appears to be successful on some campuses, but given our student culture, I’m not sure it would work well on our campus.”

The program would allow first-year students to connect with each other through e-mail. Students would indicate their roommate preferences and interests and, based on those answers, would be given names of others who had given similar responses.

McMahon said a college freshman’s first experience with a roommate is an integral part of the developmental learning process.

“I believe that students who room with someone from a different background can learn a lot about diversity, whether (it be) ethnic, geographic, economic, or other forms of diversity,” he said. “This adds to an increasingly important set of skills necessary for our students to succeed in an academic setting and in a work setting.”

Schools around the country use a variety of methods for assigning roommates. The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, for example, matches first-year students by looking at a number of factors.

“We look at roommate preference, lifestyle preference, smoking and drinking preferences, age and major,” said Carolyn Bauer, an administrative assistant for UW-Oshkosh’s Department of Residence Life.

Bauer said she felt having a good roommate experience impacts a student’s life.

“Some maintain long-lasting friendships, while some students change roommates like they change their laundry — it all depends on the individual and what they want to put into establishing a positive relationship,” Bauer said.

Residence Life employees at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga. have taken a different approach. The university uses WebRoomz, www.webroomz.com, to match freshmen with roommates.

WebRoomz allows incoming students at the university to post a profile of themselves online, thus making their information viewable to prospective roommates. The program made its debut at Georgia’s Kennesaw State University in 2002 and is currently used at 12 schools around the country, including Emory University and the University of Washington.

Lisa DeMik, the assistant director of University Housing at Emory, said WebRoomz has been met with approval at the school.

“New students, especially first-year students, really enjoyed being able to select their own roommates,” she said. “They read descriptions of potential roommates online, then corresponded with them via e-mail. Some students even exchanged phone numbers or arranged to meet in person in order to decide if they would be good roommates.”

DeMik said the service made the transition from high school to college easier for first-year students.

“This ability to ‘control their own destiny’ helped ease many fears about coming to school, and enabled students to feel more settled before they even arrived at Emory.”