College student creates roommate personality test

When students head off to college, their roommates can affect both their grades and their happiness.

When many students go to college for the first time, one of their top concerns is what their roommates will be like. Finding the right person to share a dorm with is important, as these individuals can affect students’ college experience as well as their grades, as shown in a 2011 study by Dartmouth College researcher Bruce Sacerdote.

Since the living situation of students can be so important, business degree seeker Justin Mares recently created a six-dimension personality test called RoommateFit LLC, the Pittsburgh BusinessTimes reports.

Inspired by personality tests that are used by popular dating websites, Mares creates an assessment that includes 42 questions that ask things like whether or not the person is a smoker and if they are satisfied with the way they handle situations. Using the information from the test, he believes that colleges and universities can eliminate some of the potential problems between roommates.

When designing the assessment, Mares worked with Paul Squires, an industrial psychologist as well as a corporate professional. He also spoke to about 90 university housing administrators across the nation in order to gain further insight, the news source states. 

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