What Is Tinder University?
Tinder knows exactly what college students need, another way to procrastinate the night away!
Forget about studying for that test tomorrow, you can now just find someone on Tinder University who’s in the same class and steal their notes!
Tinder University, or Tinder U, is the latest feature by Tinder, available to University students around the U.S. It allows students to swipe through other students from their college, or even surrounding schools.
You can use it to meet new people in your fresher year, find a study buddy or check out the competition in your rival school.
There are 20 million students on U.S college campuses and a lot of them already use Tinder to meet people, so it makes sense for Tinder to create a feature directed to those users.
Obviously, Tinder is going all-in with Tinder U as made clear on the most recent quarterly earnings conference call.
Mandy Ginsberg, the CEO of Tinder’s parent company, The Match Group, said, “This is really about kind of doubling down in this college presence.” So expect Tinder U to be around for a while.
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How Does Tinder U Work?
The main difference between Tinder U and regular Tinder is the fact that users who opt-in will see other students at the top of their swiping card and they will have their college logo appearing on their profile picture.
You have to be a college student (obviously), have an active .edu email address and be geolocated within your school campus.
To get started, simply open Tinder whilst on your campus and you will see a screen saying “You’re invited to Tinder University.”
Simply click on “Let’s do it” to activate the feature.
Once you do so, it will prompt you to enter your official and valid student email address (one that ends in .edu).
Tinder will then send you an email for you to verify that you are in fact a college student.
Once your profile has been verified and you want to get swiping, you will start to see other college students around you.
It will be clear what college they attend as the school logo will appear in the bottom left corner.
You can decide to opt in and out of this feature, so you’re not limited to university students mostly.
Also, I’ve mentioned that you will be able to see students from surrounding colleges, I can see a Romeo and Juliet story in the making once you match with a student from a rival school…
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To give you an example, in Boston, users of the Tinder U feature will see students from Harvard, MIT, Boston College, and any other colleges in the surrounding area.
Who Can Use Tinder U?
As I mentioned, you need to obviously be a college student with an active .edu email and be geolocated on your campus.
Tinder explains how the feature is available for all 4-year accredited, not-for-profit schools that deliver a traditional face-to-face learning format. So don’t join an online course purely to access this feature…
Another limitation is that for now, it’s only available in the US, with plans to expand internationally.
If you happen to not have a working student email address, you will not be able to use this feature.
It seems like Tinder is very serious about keeping this strictly for students.
When first rolled out last month it has only been available for iOS users, but a recent update explained that it is now available for Android users.
Do I Have To Use Tinder University?
Nope, you can easily switch between the two. So it’s good to know that the feature isn’t mandatory and will limit you to people who go to school.
If you start to get sick of only matching with people from your college you can simply go into your settings and turn it off.
Why You Should Use Tinder University
Besides the fact that Tinder is expecting massive growth in young users and therefore hopefully increasing the lifetime value of their customers, there are other reasons Tinder predicted this would be a useful feature.
For one, it allows users to have somewhat of a “safe haven,” protecting them from potentially creepy older users. We’ve all heard about married people prowling Tinder…
Also, with the inclusion of needing to verify your student email, you can rest assured knowing that you probably aren’t getting cat-fished.
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Another reason may be that if you really did just want to find a study partner, you don’t have to scroll through a myriad of people and then find out whether or not they go to your college, or school in general.
Potential Downfalls Of Tinder University
With every plus, there’s got to be a negative. Although Tinder U is mostly a very beneficial feature, it does have its downfalls.
In my opinion, the biggest con would be the potential faux pas that is bound to happen to at least a couple of you.
If you don’t know what I’m alluding to yet, imagine walking into the first day of a new class and seeing a past Tinder date, or better yet, two of them… Group assignments might get a little awkward.
Although Tinder has put measures in place to ensure you are a university student by requiring an active student email address, there is nothing stopping a past student from accessing Tinder U. Even worse than that, the same goes for a teacher…
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For anyone out there that doesn’t attend college and is wondering “What about me?” you’re not alone. It might be a little unfair for non-students as Tinder U could create an eco-system of college-goers, but leave everyone else out.
For example, if you study online you won’t be able to access Tinder U and therefore won’t match with as many Tinder users around your age group, as the majority will be matching with all the other University students. Potentially lowering your overall match rate.
Should I Use Tinder U At My College?
Before I give my answer to this, let’s take a look at the top swiped colleges from around the U.S. First let’s take a look at the top 25 campuses with the most swiped females:
- Florida State University
- University of Miami
- University of Mississippi
- University of Colorado Boulder
- University of Alabama
- Colorado State University
- Boise State University
- Iowa State University
- University of Arizona
- University of Iowa
- Kansas State University
- Indiana University
- Texas Christian University
- San Diego State University
- Virginia Tech
- Miami University (Ohio)
- Clemson University
- Ohio University
- University of Florida
- University of Kentucky
- Auburn University
- Texas Tech University
- Pennsylvania State University
- West Virginia University
- Southern Methodist University
And now for the guys:
- Georgetown University
- Brigham Young University
- University of Notre Dame
- Texas Christian University
- Air Force Academy
- Yale University
- Dartmouth College
- University of Virginia
- University of Mississippi
- University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
- United States Naval Academy
- Brown University
- Rice University
- Tulane University
- University of Vermont
- Wake Forest University
- Cornell University
- University of Tennessee
- Ohio University
- Loyola Marymount University
- Miami University (Ohio)
- United States Military Academy (West Point)
- Mississippi State University
- Clemson University
- Boston College
And if you’re sad your college has been left out, check out the whole list from Tinder including the top 50:
Even if your school is not on the above list, I highly suggest taking advantage of Tinder U. What do you have to lose?
If you are a fresher ready to take the Tinder world by storm but have no idea where to get started, check out my eBook: Tinder Hacked: The Complete Guide To Tinder.
