MAY 18 • 2023 | 81
NEXTDOR
A
new platform created
by two Michigan
students helps
incoming college students
connect.
MeetYourClass hopes to
address the difficulties of
transitioning into college, such
as meeting new friends, finding
a community and discovering
like-minded individuals.
With more than 150,000
users registered since its launch
last September by University of
Michigan students Jonah Liss
and Blake Mischley, both 19,
the platform allows students
across 160 colleges nationwide to
connect.
Liss, who grew up in
Bloomfield Hills and attended
Temple Israel, and Mischley,
a Grand Rapids native now
living in Ann Arbor, both saw
a need for the existence of
such a platform. Prior to the
development of MeetYourClass,
incoming college students often
turned to Instagram to find one
another. This, however, required
sifting through a massive feed to
discover classmates. It also led
many people to make judgments
from Instagram photos alone.
“It was almost like a yearbook,
”
Liss explains of the Instagram
feed. “There were thousands of
posts for each incoming student
who wanted to be featured.
”
Liss and Mischley realized the
system was inefficient, not to
mention time-consuming.
As an alternative, they applied
the knowledge they had been
learning in their computer
science classes and built out a
more structured and streamlined
platform that would become
MeetYourClass.
“Where we see the true gap
in the market is that universities
are utilizing their social presence
and online communities, but not
a single university is utilizing it
correctly,
” Mischley says.
In their research, Liss and
Mischley discovered that some
online student meetup programs
were run by people overseas,
or even by adults in their late
20s. It is important for students,
Mischley says, to know that the
person on the other end of the
screen is a student just like them.
With MeetYourClass, users can
rest assured knowing that other
students built the platform.
FINDING THE
PERFECT MATCH
Rather than simply listing
students at a university,
MeetYourClass offers a unique
filtration system with more
than 150 filters that lets users
narrow down search results. This
lets them discover the perfect
roommate, friend or study
buddy.
“It’s basically a model to
gauge whether or not you and
someone else are compatible,”
Liss says. “It’ll look at
whether you’re similar people
across a variety of different
benchmarks.”
This includes sleep schedules
(perhaps one student is an early
bird while the other is a night
owl, and therefore not very
compatible), shared interests and
mutual hobbies, among other
filters.
“It’s very common for there to
be thousands of people that you
could search for,
” Liss explains
New platform built by University of Michigan students allows incoming
college classes to find friends, roommates and study buddies.
Making
Connections
ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
VOICE OF A NEW GENERATION
continued on page 82