“It’s not that we want to create these perfect little lifelong friendships, although I’m happy to hear when that does happen,” she says. “We’re okay with good working relationships, although we prefer it to be a little more dynamic than that.”

After organizing the rooms, the deans turn to assembling the entryways.

“You want it to be a diverse group, a microcosm of the freshman class,” Brown says.

But at the same time, the entryway can’t be so diverse that a student feels isolated. For example, the FDO tries to avoid placing only one international student in any entryway, Brown says. She also avoids putting two students from the same varsity sport or the same high school in a single entryway.

REQUESTING RESPECT

Despite the deans’ detailed perusal of freshmen rooming surveys, roommates don’t always need to share uncanny similarities—like a love of trivia or the ability to speak French—in order to get along.

Some people say virtually nothing in their rooming application, making them more difficult to match with other freshmen who share their specific interests, Dingman says. Incoming freshmen request intangible traits like respect, balance, and humor just as often as they list detailed preferences in their rooming questionnaires.

“We had a lot of people this year, more so than in the past, just say: ‘As long as my roommates are kind and respectful, we’ll get along just fine,’” Brown says.

—Staff writer Danielle J. Kolin can be reached at dkolin@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Naveen N. Srivatsa can be reached at srivatsa@fas.harvard.edu.