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'OkZoomer' | Yale senior creates app for college students to get to know each other through Zoom

The app can be used as a way to make new friends, or potentially find your soulmate, even in a pandemic.
Credit: KENS 5

Freshman year of college. It’s basically the year where you put yourself out there and make tons of friends, right? Well, usually. Because of the pandemic, meeting people on campus might not be as easy.

But what if there was a way to get to know people at your school without leaving your dorm room?

"OkZoomer is basically a dating app for college students that was born because we were all kicked off of campuses back in March," said Iliana Valdez, creator of OkZoomer and senior at Yale University majoring in computer science.

The dating app can also be used as a way to make new friends, even in a pandemic.

"Freshmen will want to use this app because school now is remote, so they won’t have the traditional avenues of making relationships. Whether that be friendships or romantic interest relationships," said Valdez.

So how do you sign up? You’ll need to verify you’re a college student with your school email. And you’ll need to fill out a personality quiz. Then the algorithm does the work.

"You guys talk for a little bit and it’s very blind. Nobody knows what the other person looks like. And then you can decide to move to a Zoom date if you want to," said Valdez.

So far, students from more than 1,200 colleges around the world have signed up. So if you’re a college student looking to break out of your shell and get to know someone, this is one way to do it.

"It’s been really nice to see  people come out into the dating world or put themselves out there to make new friends through OkZoomer," said Valdez.

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