The University Dream VS Reality 

Before you get to university, you’ve probably built the whole thing up in your head. You arrive, meet your future best friends in the hallway of your student home, and somehow end up living with people who instantly get you. House parties. Coffee runs. Wandering into each other’s rooms just to chat. The dream. 

But for a lot of students? It doesn’t go that way.      

Most unis still throw people together at random. Sometimes it works, but most times you end up living with someone who has very different ideas about cleaning, noise, guests, or how long it’s acceptable to occupy the bathroom. One day you’re trying to make friends. The next, your milk is mysteriously disappearing and the kitchen’s become a crime scene. 

 

The Problem with Roommate Roulette  

When the Roome team were students, they dealt with all of this too. The random roommate roulette. The awkward mismatches and “is this normal?” thoughts, until we realised something, uni life is hard enough without clashing housemates. 

When we created Roome, we knew we wanted a feature that would actually make living with the right people easier, a housemate compatibility tool that helps students find people they’ll genuinely get on with. 

  

Building the Perfect Vibe Quiz 

We started by asking students what really matters when sharing a house. We sent out a questionnaire to students dealing with housemate problems (the real source of those “why me?” moments) and used their answers to shape the feature. Now, every Roome user can answer the questions that students themselves care about most, making it easier to find a compatible match. 

We broke it down into three categories: 

Essential questions: Things like rental budgets, move-in and move-out dates, and preferred locations. 

University-based questions: Your uni year, what you’re studying, that sort of thing. 

Personal questions: Early bird or night owl? Party animal or chill night-in type? And the most important one of all: pineapple on pizza – yes or no. 

 

How the Vibe Score Works  

From this, we built an algorithm that takes your answers and compares them to others, producing a compatibility score as a percentage from 1-100%. The higher your score with someone else, the more likely you are to get along as housemates. We don’t force matches, but the percentage gives you an idea of how good a fit you might be in a student house together. 

 

Safety, Control, and Connecting  

It’s then down to you to start a conversation through the Roome app, where chats are encrypted and secure. Every account is verified through a university email, so you’re only talking to real students nearby, not random people who happen to download the app. All profiles are checked, giving you full control over who you connect with and peace of mind while finding your potential housemates. 

 

We’re Always Improving the Vibe 

We’re always refining the vibe score to keep it accurate and reliable for our users. This means regularly updating the weightings, adjusting questions based on feedback, and fine-tuning the algorithm as our technology develops. We work closely with students to understand what matters and what’s changing, so we can make informed improvements that enhance the user experience. 

If you’re a Roome user and think there’s a question we should add to the profile quiz, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a message at info@roome-uni.co.uk or @roome.uni on Instagram.  

Lastly, if you’re a student or about to become one and want to take control of your housing experience, you can download the Roome app here. You only get one university experience. Roome helps you find your place, and find your people.