As college decisions loom over the heads of high school seniors, students are faced with all sorts of planning and prep work for their fresh starts at their respective colleges. Most of this stuff is pretty fun, like planning out what dorm decor you want to purchase and buying game day fits, but some of it can also be pretty nerve-wracking, and one of the scariest things is trying to figure out how you’re going to make friends in a brand-new place.
When I was moving to college for the first time as a freshman, I can 100% say that I was most nervous about making friends. I was going to a school where I pretty much knew no one, and I was absolutely terrified that I would have to eat all my meals alone in silence and never have anyone to go out and do fun stuff with. I know that this is a super common fear for college freshmen, and a lot of people try to remedy this fear by getting involved in things early, like sorority recruitment or on campus clubs. But there’s another really common way to meet people before even stepping onto campus, which is reaching out to your future peers and connecting with them before you’re all in person.
Social media has made it so easy to connect with future college classmates, and a lot of people rely on this method to make some friends before they go to school, and even to try and find their freshman year roommates so they don’t have to have random ones. When I was an incoming freshman, everyone I knew from high school (myself included) was reaching out to people and getting to know them so that they would already have friends by their first day of class.
Even though this can feel really random and scary to reach out to people that you don’t know, there are so many options that make this feel easier! Here are some of the best and most common ways to connect with your future classmates before you are all on campus together.
Follow (& Post) On Your Class’s Instagram Account
This is definitely the most common way that I know to connect with new people who are going to your school. I can pretty much guarantee your college will have an Instagram page for the incoming class of students (look for something like @uclaclassof2029) that students can follow and send in pictures and a profile of themselves to be posted on the account. Even if you don’t want to post yourself, it’s really easy to scroll through the account and see some of your future peers. They will most likely have their social media handles linked, which makes it really easy to reach out to people, so when you see someone cool, definitely follow them and shoot them a DM! Even though this might feel silly at first, just remember they are also looking for friends, so they’ll likely be grateful to hear from you. Who knows, maybe you’ll have a new friend to get coffee with during the first week of school. Or maybe you’ll even get lucky like me — I met my roommates my freshman year of college through this method and we had such a fun time living together and are all still friends. We love a success story!
Join New Student Group Chats
Although not every school may have this, some colleges will create GroupMe or Discord group chats for their incoming freshmen, which can make it easy to find new friends as well. Sometimes you can join them based on your major or activities you are interested in joining at school, which can make it really easy to find people with similar hobbies and interests, or at least someone to sit with in class on the first day.
Post On TikTok
I have seen plenty of TikToks on my FYP of people posting that they are going to a certain school and are looking for new friends, and then sharing some of their hobbies and other fun information about them. If you ever see any of these for people who are going to your school, reach out! If you’re not seeing these posts, try searching your school name and what class you are, some will likely show up. And if you’re feeling brave, you could even post your own!
Go To Orientation (Even If It’s Online)
Some colleges don’t have mandatory orientations for students, but I would recommend that if your school has the option for an orientation session, you should take it! This is probably the easiest way to meet people before school starts, because you are all forced to interact and get to know each other (which is actually super fun, I promise). Sometimes these orientation sessions will take place at different times throughout the summer before school starts, so you can meet a ton of people and connect with them more after the session before moving in. Also, you will probably meet a lot of people in your major, so this makes it really easy to find class buddies right away. And even if your college only does online orientation, or that is the only one you can do, definitely still go! It might be a little more awkward on Zoom, but you could still end up meeting some really cool people.
I know meeting new people can be scary, but I promise that once you start, it gets easier! And you never know, that random girl that you might end up messaging on Instagram might just end up being your forever best friend.