HOUSING GUIDE | Roommate goals: living with Penn roommates beyond college

While graduating from Penn means leaving your dorm room behind, that doesn’t mean that you have to leave your roommates as well. From Penn to New York, San Francisco to Mountain View, these Penn alumni decided to room with their undergraduate roommates even after leaving campus for good.

For 2011 Penn graduates Tiffany Zhou, Kasey Ma and Kristy Kao, and 2012 graduate Summer Yuan, living together in New York after graduation was a no-brainer. All four of the girls were friends, having met through their sorority, Sigma Psi Zeta. Zhou roomed with Ma and Yuan during her sophomore year in Harrison College House, and lived with Kao during her senior year in Rodin.

“We were all very close, so we spent tons of time in each other’s apartments,” Zhou said.

Once they realized that they were all going to be living in the city, it made perfect sense for them to live together.

“I knew I would be in New York City after my junior year internship, and Kasey and Kristy had always wanted to move to New York. Summer decided to look for jobs there after she accompanied me on an apartment-hunting trip,” Zhou said, “Once we realized we were all going to be in the city, we started looking for housing together.”

2015 Penn graduates Vini Saggurti and Nisha Desai roomed together their freshman and sophomore years, first in Fisher Hassenfeld and then in Rodin. They met each other through their older sisters, and decided to be roommates freshman year.

“We both didn’t want completely random roommates, so we just went for it after a ton of Facebook stalking,” Desai said.

They split because Saggurti wanted to live in the Radian, while Desai wanted to stay in Rodin. The duo was reunited post graduation, having both received job offers in San Francisco.

“I think we both secretly hoped we would end up in the same city so we could room together,” Desai said.

“It wasn’t even a decision we had to make,” Saggurti added. “We knew that if we lived together in the same city, we’d room together.”

2015 Penn grads Lewis Ellis and Max Scheiber lived in the Lambda Chi Alpha chapter house during their junior and senior years. Since they were both interested in software engineering and both received job offers before senior year, living together was an easy decision for the two friends.

“We knew that we were compatible housemates with shared interests, so there was little downside risk. We also both work in Mountain View and wanted to live within walking distance of the office,” Scheiber said.

But living with your undergraduate roommate doesn’t mean that it’s going to be a continuation of college life.

“The biggest difference, besides having substantially fewer people living here than in the chapter house, is that we can actually relax after work. We’d come home from school, sit down on the couch, and do homework for hours. Now, we come home from work and socialize,” Scheiber said.

So, what’s the verdict on living with your Penn roommate? According to these alums, if you like your roommate now, it’s a great idea. “I’d definitely recommend living with a Penn roommate. Real life is lonelier than college because you’re not surrounded by hundreds of your friends at all times, so it’s good to have someone you’re really close with,” Zhou said. “It also made making friends in the city easier because we would meet all of each other’s new friends.”

Another longtime roommate pair agreed.

“It’s helped me feel a lot less lonely since coming out here so I definitely recommend it,” Desai said.

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