Forget choosing a career path, picking your housemates is undoubtedly the most important decision you will make at university.

As a fresher, you don’t quite realise how living in a house with all your bezzie mates will be completely different to living with them in halls.  And if you’re looking for a house for your final year, that too will be a whole other ball game.

Get it wrong and you’ll spend the best days of your life being miserable.  Get it right and you’ll never want to leave.

Here’s The Tab‘s essential guide on how to choose those lucky housemates.

If you’re looking for your first uni house…

You’re a fresher looking to cram the whole of your floor from Carnatic into a house.

Don’t:

• draw the names of the people you’re going to live with out of a hat (you WILL get stuck with the one person you don’t really like that much)
• move in with anyone you’ve had any sort of sexual encounter with at any point in your life whatsoever
• just cling to one person because they will piss you off at some point

Do:

• take your time.  You friends will change between November and February and there are plenty of student houses in Liverpool to go around
• get the balance between those who party had and those who work hard
• all visit potential houses together.  You will be living in a shithole and you’ll all want to know the situation you’ll be in

Tough times are ahead, fresher.

If you’re looking for a final year house…

You lived with everyone you met in first year in your second year, and now you need to knuckle down to score that all important 2:1.

These things just can’t go on as much anymore

Don’t:

• move for the sake of moving.  Can you not remember the stress in your first year?!
• take pity on the raver friend looking for a room.  Final year’s important ya know and you don’t want your house hosting the world’s biggest pres every night
• surround yourself with stress-heads either.  Get the balance just right

Do:

• stick with your mates.  It’s a stressful time and you’ll need them to make you a brew when you’re down
• think about location.  Will you really work hard if you live opposite the Brookie? Really?
• live with people who’ll understand your workload.  Science students will always think arts students just doss around and arts students will always hate on science students for thinking that (even if we do only have uni six hours a week)

Final year’s a lot more sophisticated ya know

If you like to party hard…

And we mean hard.

Don’t:

• live with people that will only distract you even more
• live with morning people- recipe for disaster
• live with absolute clean freaks who will nag you after every pres

Making toast drunk is always going to end messily

If you fancy yourself as a bit of a geek…

Do:

• pick relatively peaceful housemates, especially if you prefer working from home
• live with people similar to yourself who will appreciate your work ethic
• consider Kensington as a location- it’s mega close to uni and saves you time in the morning

Golden rules every housemate should abide by…

1. Establish some sort of cleaning rota, even if it’s “I’m not going to do any”.  Communication is everything.
2. Consider others.  Having a spontaneous pres when everyone else has an exam the next day is not the one.
3. Don’t eat anyone’s food/use their fave shampoo/etc on the sly.  They will notice and they will probably (and quite rightly) go spare.

Arsey notes should be avoided

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