Information provided by: www.CollegeSafe.com

The Roommate Game

You can't choose your parents and you can't choose your brothers or sisters, but you can take steps to get good roommates when you go to college. Who you will end up living with at college starts with the roommate quiz and application. www.CollegeSafe.com/roomie.htm introduces a free guide on surviving college roommates. Here are a few tips from the free guide.

When you are filling out the roommate quiz, be honest and maybe even exaggerate a bit on the things that are important to you. Be yourself. Forget about trying to act cool; the people reading it couldn't care less. For example, if you are a person who likes order and gets stressed when things are in a mess, then say that you are a neat freak and don't they dare match you with a slob.

On the other hand, if you use your floor as your laundry basket and wash the dishes one at a time from the big pile in the sink, then don't put down that cleanliness is important to you. You might be hoping to get paired up with someone who is a real neat freak so that they will do all the cleaning and you can slide by without doing much, but this will only cause problems in the long run. You are likely to find the underwear that you left in the living room slowly burning in a pile outside or in the middle of your bed. Or you'll wake up with a new haircut your roommate was kind enough to give you while you were sleeping. It is not a good idea to upset someone who has access to the food you eat and who can come in and interrupt your sleep.

Roommates in the past have done some cruel and vicious things. If you want to sleep soundly at night, try to get along with your roommate.

Some of the things roommates have done include:

• cut roommate's hair while he or she was sleeping
• set up Web cams and hidden cameras to spy on roommate
• used roommate's e-mail account to send harassing e-mails to teachers