(Update in OP)No one wants my son for roommate, getting discouraged

[Janeway]

Update....found out that my son's profile was not showing in the database that students could see. It was showing on the administrative end, but it was a glitch or something where he was not showing on the student end. They fixed that and he has a roommate now! Super excited!

 

Baylor has this roommate matching system where it runs like classified ads. My son sent requests to a couple people to consider him as a roommate. But no one has requested him and the two he sent to declined to accept.  He is feeling very rejected and sad. The school says they will just assign him someone. But know that no one accepted him willingly makes him feel like someone will be forced to be with him. We are looking in to single rooms now, but he feels so rejected that his excitement and joy to go to college has mostly evaporated. The school tells us the rejection might just be that everyone else already has friends there to room with. Personally, I do not think this system works. He is going to go to college to face a bunch of pre-formed cliques that don't want him around.

Edited June 11, 2020 by Janeway

[Sneezyone]

17 minutes ago, Janeway said:

Baylor has this roommate matching system where it runs like classified ads. My son sent requests to a couple people to consider him as a roommate. But no one has requested him and the two he sent to declined to accept.  He is feeling very rejected and sad. The school says they will just assign him someone. But know that no one accepted him willingly makes him feel like someone will be forced to be with him. We are looking in to single rooms now, but he feels so rejected that his excitement and joy to go to college has mostly evaporated. The school tells us the rejection might just be that everyone else already has friends there to room with. Personally, I do not think this system works. He is going to go to college to face a bunch of pre-formed cliques that don't want him around.

 

My roomie was randomly assigned and remains my best friend to this day. Initial roommate assignments are always a crapshoot. You may room with someone who was a great friend from HS and discover they're a slob or want to party non-stop. You may room with a sensitive bookwork who won't allow you to turn on the lights after 9pm or come in late from a concert. You may room with a total loon who lays on a toppled chair muttering "I've fallen and I can't get up" in a vain attempt to garner attention (true story). It's always a crapshoot. I'd encourage your DS to see this as a blessing in disguise and an opportunity to, maybe, find someone as quirky and interesting as he is. 

Edited June 9, 2020 by Sneezyone

[Janeway]

1 minute ago, Sneezyone said:

 

My roomie was randomly assigned and remains my best friend to this day. Initial roommate assignments are always a crapshoot. You may room with someone who was a great friend from HS and discover they're a slob or want to party non-stop. You may room with a sensitive bookwork who won't allow you to turn on the lights after 9pm or come in late from a concert. It's always a crapshoot. I'd encourage your DS to see this as a blessing in disguise and an opportunity to, maybe, find someone as quirky and interesting as he is. 

I think it would be nice if everyone were random from the get go so that people would sort of be forced to interact with others rather than have just a bunch of cliques preset on campus before outsiders have a chances to come be a part of it. In other words, it is sad to start freshman year as an outsider.

[Selkie]

3 minutes ago, Janeway said:

I think it would be nice if everyone were random from the get go so that people would sort of be forced to interact with others rather than have just a bunch of cliques preset on campus before outsiders have a chances to come be a part of it. In other words, it is sad to start freshman year as an outsider.

Won't there be a few thousand first year students there? I highly doubt that all of them will have formed cliques prior to school starting. There will be plenty of other kids looking for friends, I'm sure.

[TCB]

2 minutes ago, Janeway said:

I think it would be nice if everyone were random from the get go so that people would sort of be forced to interact with others rather than have just a bunch of cliques preset on campus before outsiders have a chances to come be a part of it. In other words, it is sad to start freshman year as an outsider.

There will be a lot of people in the same boat as him though. I'm sure there will be a large number who don't already know someone there. It is really anxiety provoking though, to go somewhere completely new, especially for the moms I think. I know I worried about my dd when she went off to college, but it all worked out and she did well. I encouraged her to go to all the events etc that she could and try lots of different things and she settled in there. She is not an extrovert but she found other more quiet people like herself and has made friends.

[EKS]

23 minutes ago, Janeway said:

The school says they will just assign him someone.

This is why I think it's best to just go with the random assignment in the first place.  That is what my son is doing.

[Sneezyone]

1 minute ago, TCB said:

There will be a lot of people in the same boat as him though. I'm sure there will be a large number who don't already know someone there. It is really anxiety provoking though, to go somewhere completely new, especially for the moms I think. I know I worried about my dd when she went off to college, but it all worked out and she did well. I encouraged her to go to all the events etc that she could and try lots of different things and she settled in there. She is not an extrovert but she found other more quiet people like herself and has made friends.

 

So funny but I met one of my good friends attending the freshman luncheon for "Southern" students. I had only lived in Arkansas for two years and was glad to be gone. My table-mate was born/raised in Jackson, Mississippi. Take advantage of all of those mixers! 

[Sneezyone]

33 minutes ago, Janeway said:

I think it would be nice if everyone were random from the get go so that people would sort of be forced to interact with others rather than have just a bunch of cliques preset on campus before outsiders have a chances to come be a part of it. In other words, it is sad to start freshman year as an outsider.

I agree. I was forced into it b/c I accepted the admissions offer at the last minute and knew no one in LA. Still, those cliques will devolve VERY quickly. When I arrived on campus, two weeks early for flag corps tryouts (which I failed miserably, LOL), I had no idea what to expect. Your son will find his tribe. Even at Baylor. Have faith. :)

Edited June 9, 2020 by Sneezyone

[TCB]

21 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

 

So funny but I met one of my good friends attending the freshman luncheon for "Southern" students. I had only lived in Arkansas for two years and was glad to be gone. My table-mate was born/raised in Jackson, Mississippi. Take advantage of all of those mixers! 

Yes they are definitely worth attending! I encouraged my daughter to push herself out of her comfort zone and try something new every day.

[mathnerd]

1 hour ago, Selkie said:

Won't there be a few thousand first year students there? I highly doubt that all of them will have formed cliques prior to school starting. There will be plenty of other kids looking for friends, I'm sure.

This is true.

2 hours ago, Janeway said:

The school tells us the rejection might just be that everyone else already has friends there to room with. 

This is also true and a lot more common than your son thinks and there are literally hundreds of kids who get random roommates assigned every year. Many kids (including me) went to college where they were assigned roommates and things worked out fine. My niece did not have a good experience with the random roommate assigned to her and she moved out after a year, so, that is also an option.

Tell your son not to take the rejections personally, because, if his best friend were going to Baylor as well, it would be highly improbable that he might be looking for another roommate, right?

[RootAnn]

My DD deposited for housing at a college early so she would have a chance at a decent dorm. The housing system told you what % of a match you had woth others based on a survey everyone filled out. Then,  you could email looking for roommates. 

My DD was contacted by several kids but never responded to them as far as I know. She ended up deciding to go elsewhere. 

The two (random) suitemates she corresponded with the most prior to move-in were fine people, but she bonded the most with the one she never talked to prior to day 1.

[Janeway]

1 hour ago, mathnerd said:

This is true.

This is also true and a lot more common than your son thinks and there are literally hundreds of kids who get random roommates assigned every year. Many kids (including me) went to college where they were assigned roommates and things worked out fine. My niece did not have a good experience with the random roommate assigned to her and she moved out after a year, so, that is also an option.

Tell your son not to take the rejections personally, because, if his best friend were going to Baylor as well, it would be highly improbable that he might be looking for another roommate, right?

When I was in college, people who had friend requests were simply paired up and the rest were given random roommates. That was fine. But the process for Baylor involves putting yourself out there in an ad and hoping someone likes you. And he actually answered some other people's ads and no one liked him that he sent to and no one has sent to him. So it is way different than just having a random roommate. It is basically like in PE where the kids pick the teams and at the end, you are the only one left that no one wanted. 

[Lanny]

Baylor is a large school (14000 undergraduate students) so I assume, which I try not to do, that there is a sub Reddit for Baylor on Reddit.com   I don't post on Reddit, but I do read the threads for Carolina that interest me and occasionally I tell my DD about something I read there that might be of interest to her.  Possibly you will see something on the sub Reddit for Baylor about roommates and what to do if you want/need to change to another roommate.

Now, to get back on topic. Before DD went to Carolina last year, she wrote to one girl, an International student, and for a long long long time, there was no communication from the  other girl.  For a long time, my DD thought she was being rejected. Turned out that her access to Internet was very limited.  They are like sisters.  🙂   Both of them come from Tropical climates. Both of them are SIP in Carolina now, because they can't go home, due to Covid-19 restrictions and in our case, due to no flights in Colombia. The mom of the other girl went with her DD to UNC last year, for the first few days, and I remember the 2 of them bought a Refrigerator and some other things for their dorm room. I told my wife that the Mom of the other girl was probably relieved to find that her DD was going to have my DD for a roommate and we are thankful that our DD has her DD for a roommate.  🙂

Now, to get to the issue the OP is worried about. I believe, from reading the Carolina sub Reddit, that if someone has issues with their roommate, that during the first 2 weeks (?) they can talk  with an RA and get changed to another room. I don't think that's a big deal and hopefully it will be the same at Baylor.

The DS of the OP should look for clubs and groups that share his hobbies and interests and possibly he will find one or more friends there. In a big school, he has a much better chance of finding friends than he would in a school that has a much smaller student body. If one is out because of cliques, it's probably in a school with a much smaller undergraduate population than they have at Baylor.

I do have some concern about him not being a Baptist, however, I doubt that 100% of their students are Baptists and I don't think the DD of a Colleague who went to Baylor is a Baptist. I think they were Catholic.

Good luck to him!  The first year is probably the most stressful and also the most rewarding from the growth of the students in their development.

[8filltheheart]

27 minutes ago, Janeway said:

When I was in college, people who had friend requests were simply paired up and the rest were given random roommates. That was fine. But the process for Baylor involves putting yourself out there in an ad and hoping someone likes you. And he actually answered some other people's ads and no one liked him that he sent to and no one has sent to him. So it is way different than just having a random roommate. It is basically like in PE where the kids pick the teams and at the end, you are the only one left that no one wanted. 

A lot of times parents are involved in filling out the surveys to reflect the type of roommate they want their student to have.  It is also extremely unrealistic to expect a roommate to be a friend.  Maybe, but just as equally, maybe not.  Making friends on campus at large is every freshman's experience.  Ending up with a roommate that doesn't leave you wanting to lock them out of the room.....that is a blessing.  Roommate disaster stories are as common as arriving on campus with high school friendships.  It is just all part of the process. 

Study groups, church groups, clubs....those are place to make friends with similar intererts/values/goals. Way better than a roommate survey.  Sophomore yr is always better bc then they pick a room with friends they have made.

[GoodGrief]

6 hours ago, Janeway said:

Baylor has this roommate matching system where it runs like classified ads. My son sent requests to a couple people to consider him as a roommate. But no one has requested him and the two he sent to declined to accept.  He is feeling very rejected and sad. The school says they will just assign him someone. But know that no one accepted him willingly makes him feel like someone will be forced to be with him. We are looking in to single rooms now, but he feels so rejected that his excitement and joy to go to college has mostly evaporated. The school tells us the rejection might just be that everyone else already has friends there to room with. Personally, I do not think this system works. He is going to go to college to face a bunch of pre-formed cliques that don't want him around.

If he only sent a couple of requests, I would be surprised if he had found a match. Baylor is a huge school, and I think it's going to be really hard to generalize how things will go from early online interactions. Add to that that people are probably being really cautious about making commitments in regard to school not knowing how things will play out.

Once school starts, no one is going to be thinking about whether his housing situation is the result of an random, school-arranged roommate assignment.

Do you feel like he is well prepared for life with a roommate, and all its frustrations? From the way you have described him, it might not be a bad idea to check into singles. The room could be an oasis for him, and he can wander out to meet friends. As others have said, clubs, other sorts of groups are going to be the most likely source of relationship. For my oldest, it was a church group called Wesley Club. For my recent college grad, it was running club. worship team, and academic departmental relationships.

[Bootsie]

8 hours ago, Janeway said:

Baylor has this roommate matching system where it runs like classified ads. My son sent requests to a couple people to consider him as a roommate. But no one has requested him and the two he sent to declined to accept.  He is feeling very rejected and sad. The school says they will just assign him someone. But know that no one accepted him willingly makes him feel like someone will be forced to be with him. We are looking in to single rooms now, but he feels so rejected that his excitement and joy to go to college has mostly evaporated. The school tells us the rejection might just be that everyone else already has friends there to room with. Personally, I do not think this system works. He is going to go to college to face a bunch of pre-formed cliques that don't want him around.

I am sorry that he is upset.  I would try reframing the way that I talk about it.  I isn't that no one accepted him willingly; it is simply that a good match hasn't evolved.  That doesn't mean a random match is unwillingly accepting him.  It isn't that he has been rejected.  Some people may have already had friends who they chose as roommates.  Some may have chosen a roommate based upon some common interest such as a sport, hobby, or college major.  Others may have picked based upon something that isn't even about the roommate per se--like "wouldn't it be interesting to have a roommate from California."  Still others may be slow to pick a roommate because of concerns regarding COVID-19 or other issues. I have known a lot of student who have met someone at orientation that they want to room with--which isn't happening in the same way this year. 

He only sent to requests to two people; other people may be only sending requests to one or two people also.  I would not assume that there are a bunch of pre-formed cliques, and especially that they don't want him around.  Just because they may have had another roommate choice, for many other reasons, is not an indication they don't want him around.    

[klmama]

Two guys made other plans?  That just means that two guys made other plans.  That doesn't mean the whole school has pre-formed cliques or that he won't make friends.   

Is the roommate request process still open?  Would he let you take a look at his self-description and at the roommate options that are still listed?  He may be missing something that will jump out at you.  I helped my dc to add some details to the self-description and to identify a few students who might be better fits than the system suggested.  Dc ended up requesting one of them; the student's personal habits weren't a close fit for dc's, but they both liked similar music and the other student sounded nice.  The other student accepted.  Dc went into it knowing there would be some challenges because of the differences in personal habits, so patience was needed, but they ended up getting along very well.  If that student hadn't accepted dc's request, though, dc would have been okay with getting a roommate randomly assigned.  

[SanDiegoMom]

11 hours ago, Janeway said:

When I was in college, people who had friend requests were simply paired up and the rest were given random roommates. That was fine. But the process for Baylor involves putting yourself out there in an ad and hoping someone likes you. And he actually answered some other people's ads and no one liked him that he sent to and no one has sent to him. So it is way different than just having a random roommate. It is basically like in PE where the kids pick the teams and at the end, you are the only one left that no one wanted. 

I am surprised that a school does that.   My daughter filled out a form giving likes and dislikes, routines (morning or night person), quiet or loud, and then the University paired you up.  If you knew who you wanted to room with already you could both request to be together, and there was a FB page where students were trying to do that because they were worried about going random. But it wasn't the norm and you didn't have to even try if you didn't want to. Unfortunately the second year my daughter did try, was even "interviewed" in person by a couple of people, and ended up going random after no one really followed through. And then when she WAS paired, twice in a row students switched out of the room and she was convinced it was her fault.  And the two roommates she finally got paired up with? Are now some of her closest friends and she just signed a lease with them for her fourth year. She's so glad the other ones backed out! 

[RootAnn]

Wouldn't anyone who was paired randomly with your son be one of the people who also did not find a match on their own?

IMO, I would stop focusing on it & stop contacting people. Let the process work. He chose Baylor on the very last day possible, yes? And he submitted his "ad" 10 days ago? I'd encourage him to work on something else & not think about the process until he heard something. Maybe he can start cleaning his current room & start sorting out the things he will want to take with him.

[catz]

Other students may have committed and made plans sooner. My son had a random roommate and they were not BFFs but it was just fine.  He has 2 committed roommates for this year so he did fine socially.   Part of going to college is working through some disappointments.  I would just encourage him to use random roommate and move on. These select make very little difference in how things shake out socially in the end.  Some selected roomies end up not getting along.  Some random roomies end up best friends.  
 

I find it is helpful to listen and maybe help brainstorm problem solving with my young adult without over reacting.   This really means little for pre formed cliches.  There are lots of reason why a couple teens wouldn’t have responded from they have covid, they are re-evaluating what to do for fall, to they have a roomie, to they are flaky with technology.  Don’t personalize it.  

Edited June 10, 2020 by FuzzyCatz

[Wheres Toto]

Unless these were people he knew before going and was friends with and already thought would want to room with him, I don't understand feeling rejected.  He wasn't rejected so much as the match didn't work out for one of what could be a hundred reasons.   The others may not have even read his messages.   I would try to keep him from getting too hung up on the idea that he's going into a place with pre-formed cliques because that's going to make it harder for him to get out there and form friendships.  There will be lots of new friendships formed on campus.

My daughter went to a semi-local school where she knew a bunch of people from high school and middle school, but ended up going with a random roommate for her freshman year.   They sort of got along not awfully and the next year she roomed with a friend from middle school, and the last two years had an apartment with a mix of old and new friends.   She had a group of old friends already there but also made lots of new friends through various activities, her classes, work, etc.

My only experience living on campus I had problems with my roommate the first year and ended up getting a private room after one semester.  

[8filltheheart]

21 minutes ago, FuzzyCatz said:

There are lots of reason why a couple teens wouldn’t have responded from they have covid, they are re-evaluating what to do for fall, to they have a roomie, to they are flaky with technology.  Don’t personalize it.  

Exactly.  They don't know him.  He is just words on a page to them.  It is definitely NOT personal.  

[Lanny]

OP excellent update in post #1.  I tried to change my reaction in that first post from "Sad" to "Like" but the system wouldn't take that. I am very happy for your DS. Remember when he is trying to sign up for courses, if there is a course he would like to take that is full, use the "Coursicle" app to watch it for an opening and if it notifies him there is an opening, he needs to go, immediately, to the Baylor web site to sign up before that seat is gone.  https://www.coursicle.com/

Much good luck to your DS at Baylor!

[Janeway]

On 6/9/2020 at 8:30 PM, GoodGrief1 said:

If he only sent a couple of requests, I would be surprised if he had found a match. Baylor is a huge school, and I think it's going to be really hard to generalize how things will go from early online interactions. Add to that that people are probably being really cautious about making commitments in regard to school not knowing how things will play out.

Once school starts, no one is going to be thinking about whether his housing situation is the result of an random, school-arranged roommate assignment.

Do you feel like he is well prepared for life with a roommate, and all its frustrations? From the way you have described him, it might not be a bad idea to check into singles. The room could be an oasis for him, and he can wander out to meet friends. As others have said, clubs, other sorts of groups are going to be the most likely source of relationship. For my oldest, it was a church group called Wesley Club. For my recent college grad, it was running club. worship team, and academic departmental relationships.

Baylor is a huge school, but they are only allowed to request from the dorm/residential college/LLC they were accepted to. So it is a smaller group. I think he was given maybe 20 people to choose from.

[MerryAtHope]

Great update, I hope he has a great first year!

[klmama]

Hooray!  Thanks for updating!  I'm glad the problem was discovered and fixed, so he can relax and enjoy getting ready for school.

I see your update...glad you got it resolved.  It has been 29 years since I started at Baylor and I think room reservations were completely random at the time, but it was very, very regional.  Even so, there were plenty of opportunities to meet others early on especially during welcome week.   I was from 1200 miles away, introverted, and homesick, but even I managed to make friends.  I just can’t say that it happened right away.  In retrospect, I wish I had made more effort to join stuff my freshman year, but it all worked out.  Everyone was very nice.  I still remember sitting in computer science class one day and the girl next to me leaned over and asked if I had anywhere to go for Thanksgiving, my mom would like you to come home with me for the holiday.  We weren’t in classes together the next year, but she tracked me down and invited me back that year as well.  Baylor is really a nice size school in lots of ways...big enough that there are plenty of people there to find your tribe, but small enough not to get lost in the shuffle.

[GoodGrief]

Happy to hear the update!!

[daijobu]

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

[ikslo]

That’s great he found a roommate so quickly after the issue was resolved!  I’m sure you are both relieved.  

[easypeasy]

On 6/9/2020 at 1:50 PM, Janeway said:

Update....found out that my son's profile was not showing in the database that students could see. It was showing on the administrative end, but it was a glitch or something where he was not showing on the student end. They fixed that and he has a roommate now! Super excited!

 

Oh, I am SO happy for him!!!!

Fingers crossed that all our incoming freshmen will have great roommate relationships!

[Janeway]

On 6/11/2020 at 11:56 PM, Mom2mthj said:

I see your update...glad you got it resolved.  It has been 29 years since I started at Baylor and I think room reservations were completely random at the time, but it was very, very regional.  Even so, there were plenty of opportunities to meet others early on especially during welcome week.   I was from 1200 miles away, introverted, and homesick, but even I managed to make friends.  I just can’t say that it happened right away.  In retrospect, I wish I had made more effort to join stuff my freshman year, but it all worked out.  Everyone was very nice.  I still remember sitting in computer science class one day and the girl next to me leaned over and asked if I had anywhere to go for Thanksgiving, my mom would like you to come home with me for the holiday.  We weren’t in classes together the next year, but she tracked me down and invited me back that year as well.  Baylor is really a nice size school in lots of ways...big enough that there are plenty of people there to find your tribe, but small enough not to get lost in the shuffle.

I am seeing a lot of tears now and parents upset over the roommate process. A lot of students are not finding anyone. Remember, everyone is limited to the group they are assigned. Those who did not get to it when it first came out are finding that most people are matched and seem to be feeling just as defeated and crushed as my son did.  I think they need to go back to the original way of matching. They only changed to this way in the last couple years.

It doesn’t sound like a great way to start out the year.  My guess is if they messed up your son’s “ad” that the same thing has happened to others as well.  I can see how someone thought it might be a good idea, but it seems to be causing more issues than it solves.  Random is good - less emotional attachment if you don’t get along because you can blame it on the system instead of someone not being honest on who they were in the ad.

[Janeway]

2 hours ago, Mom2mthj said:

It doesn’t sound like a great way to start out the year.  My guess is if they messed up your son’s “ad” that the same thing has happened to others as well.  I can see how someone thought it might be a good idea, but it seems to be causing more issues than it solves.  Random is good - less emotional attachment if you don’t get along because you can blame it on the system instead of someone not being honest on who they were in the ad.

I 100% agree. I think the roommate would work out better if random. When you do it this way, there will be expectations of being besties. I think it is setting up for a lot of disappointments and problems. People will pick each other because they both like something, and then get together and realize they have personalities that do not mesh. Also, a lot of freshmen are feeling so rotten that many others are talking about withdrawing for the fall over it. I know we felt that way too.