Humans are magic behind roommate assignments

You might think it’s technology or AI behind Cornell’s first-year roommate selection process, but the magic really comes from the brainpower of our director of residence life–and lots of data.

Director of Residence Life Dan Chou spends two weeks each summer finding matches for each of Cornell’s first-years and transfer students. He looks at 35 different preference points to find compatible roommates. Each new student fills out a digital form with all the information Chou needs to make a solid match. 

He goes by who submits the form first. Then he looks at gender preference, if they want to live in a special community (STEM, arts, LGBTQ-friendly neighborhood, etc), and what residence hall building they want to live in. After that, he looks for hobbies and other important similarities, such as bedtimes and cleanliness. 

“I think my favorite part is when you have a student who has a lot of preferences, like they are really filling this form out, so you really understand who this student is, and then you find another student who is also really descriptive, and they just so happen to be a match. That’s going to be your 80-90% match. That’s exciting,” Chou said.

The Office of Residence Life uses Microsoft Access to help with this process, and the team is working with IT to adopt additional technology in the future to make the process a little faster. But Chou says it will always come down to a human making the final match, which isn’t the case at bigger schools.

“It still will always come down, at least for us, to being a manual process where a person physically approves every pair based on the maximum amount of compatibility,” Chou says.

Ana Munn Carstensen ’27 filled out a form and was matched with her roommate, Jojo Dufeck ’27. [See photo above of Carstensen (left) and Dufeck in their first-year Pauley-Rorem room.]

“Having a roommate as a first-year student was something that I was a little bit nervous about because it’s very close quarters,” Munn Carstensen said. “It has honestly been the most amazing thing ever.”

Chou matched the two in a room in Pauley-Rorem Hall, and the strangers became quick friends.

“I feel like I always have someone to talk to about different things,” Munn Carstensen said. “It’s hard transitioning to campus from being home all the time, learning how to be an adult, learning how to live alone–that kind of stuff. It’s nice to have someone to talk to about it. I feel like Jojo and I have formed a very long-lasting friendship from this.”

Do you have a story about your college roommate that you want to share? Email it to cornellreport@cornellcollege.edu with the subject line Roommate.