Freshman year is incredibly awkward for everyone, you’re going to this new place that might be far from home, and you might only know your roommates. Making friends in college is hard, and one of the most daunting tasks is finding where to sit and who to sit with in cafeterias; it’s like the lunch scene from Mean Girls, except worse — you don’t know anyone, and you might find yourself eating alone in a college dining hall. The truth is, no one tells you how difficult it can be to make new friends and find people to eat with on campus, especially if you’re someone who started college amid the COVID-19 pandemic, like me.
This fall was the first time that all of my classes were in-person and I wasn’t required to wear a mask, but I still felt rusty in my friendship-making skills. Making friends and meeting new people in college is already tough, but after the pandemic, it’s only gotten harder for many college students. However, a group of students who competed in Penn State’s HackPSU may have found a way to address the dread of making friends during college.
College students Ryan Nair, Jason Selsley, Andrew Hill, and Asa R created Meet & Eat to match students with their peers who are planning to eat at the same dining hall at the same time to avoid isolation. The system they’ve created enables students with similar interests to share a meal and ideas, and hopefully make more friends.
How does the Meet & Eat app work?
Feeling anxious about who you’re going to eat dinner with is a normal feeling for college students, as 87% of current college students say that eating together is how they typically socialize with friends, and more than 50% expect their campus’s dining hall to serve as that place to connect, Sodexo reported.
The app allows you to select the dining hall you’re eating at and the time you’ll be there and matches you with people who are also going to that dining hall. The app then gives you their contact information so you can reach out and hopefully eat dinner together, 6WAJC reported.
The Apple iOS app aims to address isolation among college students during meal times, and it just might be the easiest to make friends without having to knock on neighbors’ doors and possibly face rejection.
Is meet & eat available at your school?
Ryan’s work on the app led him to be named one of Apple’s Swift Student Challenge winners in 2023. The challenge recognizes the top student coders from around the world. Nair plans to continue working on the app, and hopes to have it in the App Store and available for Penn State students this year. As for the app’s availability on other college campuses, we’ll have to see what the future holds!