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A roommate is a person with whom one shares a room or rooms. Affectionately known as a roomie. In the UK, roommate normally refers to a person sharing the same room, whereas in the U.S. it typically refers to a person sharing the same house or apartment irrespective of whether they share the same room (bedroom). The latter would usually be referred to as a housemate or flatmate (flat being the common British word for apartment), if they shared the same house or apartment but not the same room. In most university dormitories, roommates are of the same sex. Cohabitants of apartments are also termed roommates. However, unmarried couples living together are generally not labelled roommates. One of the more difficult tasks for the house office in college is matching roommates for incoming 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. In Japan, people rarely live with roommates; perhaps given that most houses there are not designed to be shared by strangers. Roommates are a fairly common point of reference in Western culture, especially in North America. Therefore, many novels, movies, plays, and television programs employ roommates as a basic principle or a plot device.
The Roommate Boom Since the TV series Friends, sharing apartments with roommates have been growing in popularity in the world. Many want to experience the life style of living in a community to share high costs of rents, meeting new people and learn new languages. Another contribution to the roommate boom has been the successful French movie L'Auberge espagnole by French director Cédric Klapisch. In this movie a young French student moves to Barcelona in a shared apartment with people coming from different countries. Student exchanges are getting more and more popular with globalization and has influenced a lot in the Roommate Boom. The Erasmus exchange program in Europe has contributed as being the biggest exchange program in Europe. Exchange students can live in university residences but a growing amount want to share apartments with other international students in shared apartments. Online Roommate Services There has been a growth of online roommate services on the internet since the last 5 years. Such services provide new solutions to the increasing amount of students that are doing student exchanges and want to live in communities. Most of these sites are free to sign up but have hidden fees in the form of providing personal information. It lets its users browse profiles for free but when they want to communicate with a user it needs to pay the fee. Other less common services provide totally free services and base their revenues on advertisement. Another form of roommate service is free for search but ask to receive the amount of the first month of rent as a form of service fee. This kind of service is usually apartment agencies that operate online since it bases their business model on their off line store. Source ; | ||||||||
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