One of difficult tasks for the house office in college, is matching roommates for freshmen. Some statistics show that the academic grades, study style, social behavior and personality of one roommate will affect the other roommate's academic performance.
Living with a roommate can mean much less privacy than having a room on your own, and for some people this can cause a lot of stress.
In Japan, people rarely live with roommates; perhaps given that most of houses are not designed in a way for strangers to share the house.
In the computer game The Sims, produced by Electronic Arts and designed by Maxis, the Roomies is also the name of one of the premade families in the game.