Kunal Shah and his not-so-unique struggle of finding a college roommate
Staff Writer
“I was in a [summer] program in 10th grade where I had three random roommates. One of them was literally racist to me, the other one was a massive party guy who brought alcohol into our room, and the third dude was just not the kind of person I wanted to be friends with.”
Kunal Shah (12) has had his fair share of roommate struggles in the past, but his scarring summer camp experience will soon become commonplace for a class of graduating seniors who have never had to live with someone else before.
Senior year is often defined by college applications, letters of recommendation, and a laid back second semester, but perhaps one of the most important and least discussed aspects of it all is finding someone to live with in college. While finding a roommate may not seem important, having a say in who you share a room with for your first year away from home is, according to Shah, essential.
“This dude I know at UIUC [University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign] got a random roommate, and this guy literally robbed him. He stole from him,” Shah shared. “[Going random] is a gamble. I don’t want to leave it up to that gamble.”
For that reason—and his horrifying 10th grade fiasco, of course—Shah has elected to take extra steps to find a roommate himself, and even though he started searching right after he accepted his college offer, he hadn’t anticipated the difficulties of actually finding someone to room with. His story begins on April 29th, when he made contact with his first future schoolmate.
“One of my friends knew a dude who was in my college, and I was like ‘Okay, we have a mutual connection and he seems like we’ll click,’” Shah recalls. “So I messaged him.”
He proceeded to show a chat log between him and the roommate candidate, long after communications between the two had ceased. In text, the candidate quickly confessed he had been talking to other people and found two roommates already, but would let Shah know if anything changed.
“He gave me a soft no,” a defeated Shah admitted.
What happened in his first attempt to connect with someone would prove to be representative of the following attempts as well. A promising marine biology major with shared hobbies? Already considering other roommates. A committed student with interesting posts on his Instagram? Not looking for the same housing options. A student—just any student at all? Taken.
“I messaged at least four people and they either left me on read or just [didn’t] respond,” Shah revealed. “And I know that they’ve seen [my messages] because they’ve been posting.”
But hope is not yet lost for Shah, as he is set on creating his “I GOT !N” college post in hopes that someone will reach out to him. The post provides visibility to everyone following individual colleges and universities’ newly admitted Instagram page. It opens doors for potential roommates to discover and reach out to you instead of you reaching out to them, as Shah had been unsuccessfully doing for a number of weeks.
“The thing about making a post is that the people who do reach out to me, I won’t know who they are,” Shah explained, highlighting one of the few downsides of the strategy.
As he works towards his ultimate goal of finding a compatible roommate, Shah hopes that future college acceptees will use his story as a warning for what to expect from this niche aspect of senior year.
“People don’t really realize it, but once you go into college, you don’t have an [entirely] private space for yourself anymore. For that reason alone, you want somebody who you can be comfortable around because that’s who you’re sharing your [only] private space with,” Shah said. “[Starting the search] earlier would have been better.”
“There’s a certain amount of excitement to the [roommate] lottery and the luck of the draw,” Shah said, “but now I realize your roommate could be anybody. They could be a good person, or they could just not click, and if there’s one person on campus you want to be great friends with, it’s your roommate” (Photo/Art Credit: Muhammed A. Ali (12)).
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