Roommate compatibility is one of the most important aspects of a good on-campus living experience.  A positive experience can improve grades and the likelihood that a student will return to Missouri State for future semesters; whereas, a bad experience can create frustration and dissatisfaction for students.

With student success in mind, the Office of Residence Life, Housing and Dining Services partnered with Computer Services -Management Information Systems to create a program that would improve roommate matching.  The program matches roommates in two ways – through mutual roommate or suitemate request or based on answers to a series of lifestyle questions.

Nearly 4,000 students apply to live on campus each fall semester.  Of those students, nearly half have one or more roommate or suitemate requests.  In the past, matching requests was a labor-intensive manual process that took weeks to complete during the first round of fall assignments.  The new matching algorithm is designed to automate this process while also improving the likelihood that mutually requested roommate and suitemates are assigned together.

If a student has not requested a roommate, the program assigns the student to a roommate based on answers to a series of lifestyle questions that each student answers during the housing application process.  The program chooses the best possible lifestyle compatibility score between two roommates in the student’s building of choice.

The program was first used for spring 2014 assignment of new students and matched 78% of students with a roommate having a lifestyle compatibility score of 80/100 or above.  Assignments for fall semester begin April 1, 2014.

This project took approximately six months to plan and complete, resulting in 5,036 lines of code!  The collaborative project team included Marianne Stanley and Sarah Williams from MIS and Jayne Markin and Lenord McGownd from Residence Life.

Written by Sarah Williams, Analyst MIS Student and Academic Team