These students experienced their first year at Simpson College just like everyone else.

They endured the awkward first meeting, the uncomfortable first few days dragging each other around to first-year events and meals.

Little did they know, they had found their perfect match.

Just last year, sophomores Katie Wiegand and Audrey Sebring started their first year of college together.

“We were paired through the roommate selection,” Sebring said.

“I was actually supposed to room with someone else, ‘cause I did the Facebook page, but she got a roommate just when I was talking to her and I was like, ‘Well, I guess I’ll have to see who they’re rooming me with,’” Wiegand said.

Their first day on campus, the two went through the typical awkwardness of first meeting each other.

“I remember we were both trying to find things to talk about, like what we had in common,” Sebring said. “We were both theater and music, obviously, because we’re both music majors.”

Of course, Sebring and Wiegand were able to find many things in common.

“We both think we’re funny,” they laughed.

Dean of Students Luke Behaunek found himself drawn to working in roommate selection when he was a resident assistant while he was in college.

“I really enjoyed my time with that position for three years, and I really liked the energy that’s on a college campus to develop and learn and grow and better yourself in a variety of ways across our student bodies,” Behaunek said. “Simpson had a position open and I guess the rest is history.”

Behaunek explained that there are two ways to match with a roommate coming into Simpson: the roommate selection application or actively posting and searching for matches on the Simpson College class Facebook group pages created by admissions officials, which makes up about one-third of roommate selection.

That’s how juniors Macie Heller and Megan Myers found each other.

“Megan put something up and I messaged her on Facebook, and it was the most uncomfortable, awkward message ever,” Heller said.

“We tracked back that message to the day she sent it, and it was Feb. 25, so now that’s our friendaversary we celebrate,” Myers added. “[The message] was really cheesy. It’s good stuff.”

The two took a break from rooming together to live in their sorority houses, Heller with Pi Beta Phi and Myers with Kappa Kappa Gamma.

“After our freshman year we were like, ‘We don’t want to move into our sorority houses’ because life was so good living together,” Heller said.

“I was dreading moving in, I remember that,” Myers added. “I remember even when we moved in the next year older people were like, ‘Oh, there’s no way you and Macie are gonna stay close. There’s just no way, you’re going to separate.’”

Despite living apart from each other, it caused Heller and Myers to form an even closer bond.

“We had someone to go hang out with when we needed to get away,” Heller said.

“It was nice to have each other to go to,” Myers said. “Two years later, we’re just as close.”

The two will be living together again during their senior year at Simpson.

To commemorate their three-year anniversary this year, the pair got matching tattoos on their ring fingers.

“We got the sign congruent, which means different, yet the same. We thought that was representative of us,” Myers said.

When it comes to pairing out-of-state students, the admissions counselors pay close attention to the characteristics on each survey to find the best match for them.

“It could very well be the case that an out-of-state student, we feel, would work well with someone closer to here so they can have some connections close to campus. That’s not always a rule of thumb for us,” Behaunek said.

That was, in fact, the case for senior Vicente Argueta, of Dallas, and junior Adam Wieser, of Atlantic, Iowa.

“It was different because he was from here and I wasn’t,” Argueta said. “He was there since the morning on move-in day. I came in and I didn’t know a single person here. He was the first person I met, him and his family.”

After three years, Wieser and Argueta are still rooming together.

“We’re pretty chill. We just kind of shared everything, agreed on everything, liked the same stuff,” Wieser said.

The two stuck together until the very end, as Argueta graduates this year.

When asked what Wieser was going to do without him, he had one answer: “I don’t know.” The two laughed.

“I’m with one that I’m with right now and two other people,” Wieser said.

All three pairs agreed on one piece of advice for incoming freshmen nervous to live with a roommate: Be open and be yourself.

The roommate survey might seem scary and intimidating, but it has proven to work out in the best way.

“I just let it happen, he did, and now we’re best friends,” Argueta said. “You never know.”