Being in college already provides stress of its own – balancing getting to classes and partying, mid terms and finals, making friends, being cool, extra curricular activities – it’s all mixed in a nice pot of stress stew. On top of that you may or may not be assigned a roommate that will turn into either your best bud or your mortal enemy. Schools traditionally assign roommates to incoming students. Sometimes randomly, sometimes through a set of basic questionnaires (in a bid to try and maintain some basic harmony between bunks) – and a lot of times even this data is inaccurate. According to the New York Times:

“A lot of times, the parents filled it out,” says Joe Lindwall, vice president for marketing at StarRez, a company that provides housing management software to about 250 campuses in North America. “Suddenly everyone is a nonsmoker, goes to bed by 10 p.m. and is very studious.”

We know that is untrue. But whadya gonna do if your mum is the one filling out the questionnaire… am I right? Well here’s a thought. Try Roomsync!

Thanks to this nifty new app, students actually have a chance to find someone they think they can fit in with.

Northwestern University students are certainly getting busy with this new app. Here’s how it works. Roomsync, which is a Facebook pairing app, asks it’s users a number of personality and preference questions like neatness, noise tolerance, dorm-room guests, etc. and then searches for possible candidates. It allows two students to ‘friend’ each other and start interacting before even moving in together. If they click, they can then request one another as roommates. This is great news for incoming freshmen as it really offers them some level of control at a time when everything seems up in the air.

Also, if your potential roommate seems weird, you’ll know about it beforehand. So far it’s been working well on the Northwestern Campus. Daniel Stompor, a student at Northwestern who used the app to find a roommate said, “It was one of the highlights of my freshman year, the fact that I had a choice in that.”

The staff hopes that because students request to stay with each other it won’t only help bypass serious conflicts in the future but that students will also work harder to maintain peace.