Walking into your first semester of college can be an unnerving, yet extremely exciting experience. With a new campus, new teachers, and new friends, anything can happen! For some, a major component that determines your experience at WashU is the person you spend a large portion of your time with: your roommate. Roommates: you either love them or you don’t. Everyone has a different experience.

Yet housing decisions do not need to be so fraught. Not living with your friends is not the end-all, be-all of your housing situation, and your housing situation is not the end-all, be-all of your friendships.

Valentine’s Day has arrived. Love is in the air. Maybe you’ve caught a whiff of it through the Datamatch results that were released this morning. Or maybe you think that regardless of how funny some of the questions may have been, online algorithms will never help you find that special someone. Or maybe you didn’t even consider doing it. Either way, we know you probably have some thoughts on the survey. Here’s what we think Datamatch should have asked

You may think you’re going to be living with your soon-to-be bestie, but how much do you really know about the person you’re planning to room with next year?

I received a lot of advice before coming to college – friends, relatives, neighbor’s brother’s uncle’s best friend’s girlfriend’s dogs all felt the need to share their best words of wisdom before I embarked on this major life adventure. Some of it was worthless, some it was weird, and some of it was priceless.

Before my first year at Wash. U., fear outweighed excitement. And I think, looking back, that I was more afraid of my freshman roommate (nothing personal) than I was of Gen. Chem. I had no idea what it would be like to live with someone my own age—someone likely to be very different from me.