Did any of you share a room at university?

[LivBonas]

I wondered if any of you shared a room at university. It is one of the accommodation options at the University of York that my DD was considering. Any experiences, positive or negative, please let me know! 😊

blueskypink, agreed, but equally modern students expect to use headphones, which helps a lot.

The bigger problem is hours. Clubbing is so much later than the hall disco of my youth, and it is really difficult for, say, scientists with regular early starts to share (room or hall) with others with fewer contact hours who can be nocternal. My guess though is that now you are more likely to end up sharing with a hard working and frugal overseas student than you were back in the day. And worth remembering that because of different lifestyles there is a big merry-go-round of room/hall/flat swaps. It can be harder to move if you are in expensive ensuite 42 week accomodation.

I wish I hadn't spotted this thread, Ds has just applied for accommodation at St Andrews and ticked the willing to share box, mainly to increase his chance of getting catered at a reasonable price. The newly opened catered halls are over £9000! it is a worry, he is very quiet and bookish and will be under 18 for a term, it will be an issue if he gets put in with a frat boy type, he still tends to go to bed at 10 o'clock! He will come home for the weekend regularly because of a hobby he shares with DH so that will probably help. I shared in first year but hung out with DH in his flat at weekends so it was fine.
I will be buying a set of the special earbuds I have to listen to podcasts on in bed at the same time as blocking out DH's snoring for him.

I was 17 to begin with too. Honestly it was fine.

I really would not encourage coming home every weekend. He will struggle to make friends. He just won’t be there for shared events in the hall or elsewhere. I would truly get him to back off the hobby at home and encourage him to stay. What’s the point of catered if he goes home every weekend? Very expensive to pay for meals you don’t eat!

It was a bit different in my day, but the hall I was in was all first years in shared rooms. I think they put people together on the same courses but that was it.
It was nice to have someone to go around with for the first few days but we each made our own friends quite soon.

However my roommate only lasted two terms and then left...nothing to do with Me! I then spent the last term hoping they wouldn't move me and another student in the same situation in together. (They didnt)

Agree totally with Bubbles - coming home regularly for the weekend is not a good thing to do.

"coming home regularly for the weekend is not a good thing to do"

Surely it depends. It was quite common for London raised kids from European families to choose London Universities over those outside London, because they see no reason to do otherwise. The same often holds true of kids from various London ethnic communities, eg some parts of the Jewish community.

Being close to home allows a student to continue with activities and keep up friendships, as well as engaging in University life. It really suited DS, though actually we may have seen less, albeit more frequently, of him than had he been further away. And DDs experience is that plenty go home a lot; most if not every weekend. A bit like London based Oxford students were reputed to do. DD now returns occasionally to play club sport, but some of the better players will be doing the same regularly.

Each to their own. But in the same way that not everyone wants their children to board, some are happy to see students return home at weekends.

Needmoresleep with my DCs, friends at other universities visit them or vica versa. We are of course delighted when they come home (and we don't live very far) but it has only happened once on average during term time, they have busy fulfilling student lives and I am really pleased for them. They also tell me that very few of their friends go home regularly unless there is some issue.
With regards coming home for sport, again that seems to be unusual in their circle. The better sports people train and play with clubs near their university if their university team is not of a sufficient standard.

my university had a few shared rooms in some of the halls.
there's no way i'd opt for that. you need privacy imo, and first year of uni is your big break away and time to embrace everything new.
i think it was mostly the american and canadian students who were allocated those rooms.

@wigglybeezer - I shared in my 1st year at St Andrews (as most of the first years did back then who were in the "old" residences). The plus point was that you had a decent sized room. (Had single rooms in subsequent years: was fortunate enough to get a room in the hall every year rather than having up find a flat).

As it happened, my first room share dropped out of Uni, I had a term on my own and then a French girl shared with me for the 3rd term (and I actually went and stayed with her family during the summer holiday).

Friends of mine (both male and female) are still life long friends with the person they shared with.

I was in John Burnett Hall (which back then was nicknamed the Atholl but now apparently is called "Jeebs") which was a lovely size and very friendly even if we did spend too much time in the Dunvegan

St Andrews can be a pretty claustrophobic place (even though I loved it) and I used to find that I "needed" to go home to Glasgow once a term (back then it was 3 x 10 week terms).

Oh - and I want from 5th year, so was 17 for the first 6 months (only turned 18 in April).

Do not do it. Many years ago my parents persuaded me to tick the 'willing to share' box on my application for accommodation at York. Of course, 'willing to share' in reality means you will end up sharing. It was no as awful as it could have been, but it was pretty bad.
Just imagine that someone picked a stranger off the street and told you that you had to share your bedroom with them for the next 8 months. That is exactly what it is like.

I did not tick the ‘wiling to share’ box on my accommodation form and neither did my room mate, and we still got a shared room!

When we met we were both going “but I ticked no...”

All worked out amazingly though and we are still great friends 20 years later

I went to Durham in 2000 and there were a few shared rooms. I was appalled as I couldn't imagine anything worse.

I remember though there were identical twins who shared a room. I always thought it was a bit sad they'd picked the same uni, same course, same college and same bloody room as each other.

Don't do it. I was at York in what was then Langwith College - the buildings have been taken over by Derwent College.
The shared rooms are quite big but all the people I knew who were sharing hated it. One guy was woken up nearly every night by his room mate masturbating into a wine bottle while looking at porn magazines.
Another girl got hardly any sleep because her roommate was a party animal - coming in drunk and shouting most nights.
Most people ended up moving out into single rooms as soon as available.
I think uni is hard enough without having to share with some random.
Most of the people I knew didn't want a shared room but had been late with accommodation applications and allocated the rooms - there didn't seem to have been much thought into who would get on with each other.
I appreciate that a lot of people on here have positive stories to tell but I think it is a big risk and if it isn't necessary financially or due to going through clearing, there is no need to take that risk.

I did in my first year. Was rubbish at least partially because our courses were entirely incompatible - I had 9am lectures 4 days a week and she had a 9am the only other day and resented that I needed to get up for the 9am lectures...

I can't see how such different timetables were deemed compatible- she was also into clubbing etc and I definitely wasn't!

I did, back in the olden days!! I loved it, it was sociable and fun. Had to leave a note on the door if we had 'company' or use the bathroom. I'm surprised it's still an option though. Even then it was an old cold fraught house adjacent to the halls, I imagine sold off now.

I shared a room in my first year. 30 years on, my room mate and I still live round the corner from each other. We're totally different from each other and would never normally have been friends but it's been great.

We were in a house with all shared rooms, some got on, some didn't. It is a bit hit and miss. I wouldn't have changed my experience but we aren't friends now. Wonders if I was the impossible to live with party animal in this scenario