Dating in college shouldn’t be hard, but finding a boyfriend may fall to the wayside when you’re juggling good grades, keeping in touch with family, making new friends, and trying not to be as socially awkward as possible. Two Columbia University students, Balazs Alexa and Jean Meyer, are combating the hardships of college dating with their website DateMySchool.com.

Date My School, exclusively for college students, allows students or alumni to search through profiles of other students at their school or within their network. For example, as a University of North Florida student, I was able to see profiles of students throughout all Florida universities. Date My School is like OK Cupid meets Facebook but with more exclusivity.

“We expanded in a similar manner that they did initially, but then they opened it up for everybody in the world,” Alexa told CNN about the Facebook comparison. “We will never do that.”

Initially, the dating site opened to 20 schools including Columbia, New York University and Harvard. More than 1,300 Columbia students signed up for the site within the first week. Now the site has over 20,000 members and is offered to 140 schools nationwide.

With so many members, potential account holders don’t need to feel pressured about Internet dating. Date My School may give you a reason to talk to the cutie from Physics 101 or the lacrosse player from Financial Accounting. The privacy and selectivity on the site enables students to pick which departments at their school or which schools can view their profile. In a New York Times article, Columbia film student Dominique Lefebvre revealed a friend whose profile was only visible to law, business, engineering and med students at Columbia.

Another beauty of the site is its search function, which allows you to search for someone with the same major. Even if that person isn’t a great date, imagine how beneficial they would be as a study partner. 

With success stories in the nine months since the site’s launch, Date My School is an efficient method for dating and meeting new people in a time where students spend more time online than they do offline. It’s no Russian roulette of online dating. It offers students all the control they need to navigate an unusually hard period of dating. 

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net