Awkward situation with living arrangements, opinions/advice??

I am a first year university student who is currently in the process of choosing people to live with next year. Basically, during the first few months of uni my current housemates mentioned a few times that they wouldn't mind us lot all living together (seven of us) although we never actually sat down and talked about it and made firm plans as a house. Since this time, it has become quite obvious that I get along with certain housemates and people on my course a lot better than a few of the people I live with already. There is a close group of six of us who would like to live together next year - two people from another house and, including myself, four people from the house I'm already in. However, this would leave the three remaining people in my house excluded. This is VERY awkward, as the three remaining housemates have been asking about living situations next year and it ended up with us all sitting around a table in silence as we said we were probably going to be living with different people. It's not that none of us like them, just that we all naturally gravitated towards each other a lot better and are generally more comfortable around each other. I don't want this to make the rest of the year excruciatingly awkward - since we 'talked' (not a lot of talking really went on) about it, everyone has basically locked themselves away in their room. The divide in the house is also now so obvious, we were already quite an awkward house but now it just seems to be on a whole new level. Opinions on how to make the situation easier/kinder??

If you don't enjoy living with them, it's fair enough to get the situation out in the open. I think, as there's three people not in your group, it's not the same as just excluding one person. Surely those three people can find somewhere to live together? There will likely be a lot more options for 3 people living together compared to 7 or 9!

In some ways, I think you will just have to push through the awkwardness- apologise for any misunderstanding (even if you think there hasn't been one), say you would like to remain friends (if this is true) and try to make things friendlier in the house. Perhaps suggest you all get a takeaway together this weekend?

Alternatively, if you were never really friends in the first place, I suggest the four of you carry on as normal. Make sure the other three know you don't want to exclude them in their own home, and maybe sometimes hang out in bedrooms rather than the living room all the time.

We talked about it again tonight, and tried to make it clear that we wanted to live as a the 6 of us next year and that it wasn't anything personal and it felt like it was going to turn into WW3. We were instantly bombarded with a lot of questions/accusations that made us feel quite cornered and the situation still hasn't resolved itself. The thing is, the 3 people who we weren't planning on living with, none of us are close friends with them.. more living acquaintances, so I can't help but feel a slight pang of annoyance for the pressure that is being put on us? I can see it from their POV but at the same time, I can't please everyone at once!