Freshman roommates (from left) Cheryl Gunther, Katie McEnaney, Faith Chyou, and Lara Naqushbandi in the common room of their suite, were assigned to each other and, according to Lara, get along "great." Photo by Rose Lincoln

Freshmen are explorers. As newcomers to the College, they arrive with an array of questions, all of which demand answers. But there is one question that rises in importance above all others, particularly in these, the first few weeks of the year:

Who is this person who is my roommate, and why in the world was I paired with him or her?

Freshmen first learn the results of the lengthy freshman rooming process when 1,650 sheets of paper — each printed with a student’s name, the names of up to five roommates, and a Harvard Yard address — arrive in their mailboxes around mid-August. These are the all-important dormitory and roommate assignments.

Once these assignments are in hand, some incoming students will sp the ensuing weeks sketching mental pictures of each other, trying to give character to those empty names. But most shove these prognostications aside, waiting instead for the first impressions of move-in day.

When, at last, the freshman dormitories open their doors, everyone is placed on the same page.

Freshman roommates have spent the last several weeks cautiously measuring each other, all the time pondering what kind of match the Freshman Dean’s Office has made.

In the spring, all members of the incoming class receive a mailing from the College’s Freshman Dean’s Office (FDO) that includes an application for first-year housing and an adviser information form. The housing application asks freshmen to fill in some objective criteria such as estimated waking and sleeping hours, preferences for quiet or social settings, tastes in music, and expectations of neatness. The adviser’s form inquires about possible fields of concentration, academic strengths and weaknesses, and interests outside the classroom. Students are also asked to write a short essay describing themselves and the characteristics they would like for their roommates to possess.

The forms are comprehensive, yet many freshmen may still feel uneasy. After all, the questionnaires may uncover a person’s academic and extracurricular passions, but they do not reveal much about personality?

Elizabeth Studley Nathans, Dean of Freshmen, allays some fears when she declares: "Freshman housing at Harvard is still done by hand."

Nathans adds that Harvard’s incoming class is first sorted at the Admissions Office in a process that divides students into three groups. These groups will be housed in three sub-sections of the Yard. The initial sorting is based on factors such as the number of spaces for men and women, and not on variables such as students’ interests or hometowns. The FDO receives this preliminary sort in early June, and it occupies the full attention of the assistant deans of freshmen through the of July.

The assistant deans of freshmen are Phil Bean, Sarah Drummond, and W y Franz. They each determine rooming groups for one-third of the Yard. All three select housing for students "by hand," consulting everything from rooming forms to admission materials, parent letters and medical or disability information. And together, they look for a balance between establishing a diversity that reflects the makeup of the class, and ensuring that there is common ground in the dormitories, entries, and suites.

Nathans notes that the assistant deans must also take into account the physical conditions of the buildings. First-year students live in the 17 dormitories located in or adjacent to Harvard Yard. In this central and historic part of the campus, the architecture of the dormitories ranges from Georgian to High Victorian to contemporary. With construction dates between 1720 and 1974, it is no surprise that the interiors and layouts of each hall vary and that the distinctiveness of each building sometimes determines the students who might be assigned to them.

Lionel and Mower are smaller than some of the other dormitories, and the double-occupancy rooms in Hollis and Stoughton must obviously be assigned with special attention to students’ sleeping hours and personal habits. "Within the Yard, we have many rooms whose physical size makes them inappropriate, for example, for occupancy by very tall women or men," Nathans says. Similarly, the FDO tries to respect the needs of senior University officers who share Massachusetts Hall with freshmen by not, for example, placing percussionists there.

The housing process occupies each assistant dean for more than 400 hours over six weeks. Assistant Dean Drummond hopes that the freshman roommates she houses form lasting fri ships. "We have had many roommate groups go on to the Houses and stay together," she says, "but I daresay that assistant deans can’t take too much credit for that! Harvard brings together a remarkable group of students each year."

As all the assistant deans testify, there is only so much one can gather from a housing application. They are aware that all students would like to live with someone who is kind, generous, flexible, and has a great personality. Who wouldn’t? "We find that we must trust our instincts to a great extent to determine what students might live together easily. Some students write long essays, others short comments, still others nothing at all."

As Drummond adds, "The ability to form deep, lifelong ties says more about the quality of character among our students, I believe, than any work we do."

Lara Naqushbandi, one of the members of the freshman Class of 2003, says that she had no idea what rooming issues she should consider when she received her housing application last spring. "The questionnaire I received was really useful in pinpointing important factors, such as sleeping hours and mess," she says. "I was initially quite concerned about sleeping hours, but now I’ve realized that it’s really not a big deal. I’ve also found that, talking to my roommates, we are all t ing to keep later hours than we’d originally planned."

Naqushbandi, who grew up in England, says she was quite vague in her application responses. "I’d always choose the average answer when it came to saying if I was messy," she says. On the other hand, Naqushbandi was more specific when she stated her willingness to have roommates with backgrounds and interests different from hers. "As for my ideal roommate," she says, "I just said I wanted to share with Americans, because I heard rumors that international students studying in America could get rather cliquey, and I didn’t want that. I felt it was important for me to get to know Americans and their culture."

What has Naqushbandi’s rooming experience been so far? "My roommates and I are all quite busy, with classes or extracurricular activities, so we’re hardly ever in the room at the same time," she says. But Naqushbandi knows that her first impressions of her roommates are undergoing constant revision.

When she isn’t rushing to her class, First Nights: Five Performance Premieres, or distributing flyers for Harvard Student Agencies, where she holds a part-time job, Naqushbandi shares 10- or 15-minute conversations with her roommates. In one of these moments, she discovered the secret ambition of one of her roommates, a prospective economics major who is preparing herself for a career in the FBI. "Are you serious? I didn’t know that!" she replied, a little pleased by the surprise. Like most freshmen, Naqushbandi is looking forward to a year that will abound in spontaneous discoveries exactly like this one.