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So the guy sitting behind you in calc class drools as he sleeps through lecture. The drunk guys at frat parties keep inviting you up to the roof to ‘enjoy the view’. And the only guy who comes anywhere near meeting your dating standards is taken. We’ve all been there—when you’re quite sure the only eligible bachelors exist in Jane Austen novels. But some college students have found a way to expand their dating circle, without even leaving their dorm rooms. Welcome to the world of online dating.

Anita Leechor, a senior at Wellesley College, decided to try online dating after unsuccessful attempts to meet guys at parties at Olin, an engineering college nearby. “As sweet and adorably geeky as the guys were, they were completely overrun with Wellesley women – among them my friends,” she explains. “I was annoyed at the high women-to-men ratio, and I don’t even like parties, so I decided to go for something a little less chaotic. Someone posted the very next day to a conference I read that it’s perfectly acceptable to use online dating these days, so I gave it a try.” She ended up meeting someone who she’s now been dating for two months!

If you’re considering expanding your dating scene to the world wide web, HC’s here to help you every step of the way.

STEP 1: Choosing To Go Online

Unsure if the online dating scene is for you? The only way to know for sure is to try. “As embarrassing it may seem (I still get embarrassed telling everyone how I met my boyfriend), I would say go for it,” advises HC writer Sophie Jasinski, who met her boyfriend on OkCupid.

And if anything about looking for love online seems weird or anti-social to you, think of how much time you spend on Facebook or IM. Yeah, I thought so. “There are these preconceived notions that OkCupid is for people who cant ‘get some’ in real life but that’s definitely not the case,” says one a freshman at Wellesley who’s currently dating someone she met on OkCupid.

You don’t need to be taking it super seriously either. Sophie first created her account as a joke, and one anonymous junior at Wellesley created hers out of boredom. “I got sick for two days and was stuck in the house, and I thought, ‘what can I do to entertain myself?’” she says.

STEP 2: Choosing a Service

Choosing an online dating service is just like choosing which bar to go to on a Saturday night; you want one where you can meet college students, avoid creepers, and not break the bank. The Wellesley freshman chose OkCupid for exactly those reasons. “It was recommended to me after I got creeped out by other lesser known sites,” she explains. “Plus you can block people and it’s free.”

You might also want to try a site aimed specifically at college students. Our anonymous junior at Wellesley uses The Matchup, a free service that requires an e-mail at one of eight Boston-area colleges. She felt safer knowing all her potential matches were associated with a college.

And if you’re not sure where you’ll find the best matches, you can virtually barhop by trying more than one service and sticking with the one that’s right for you. “I tried OkCupid and The Matchup,” says Anita. “On the Matchup, there were maybe 100 registered MIT students, compared to almost 500 Wellesley students. No dice, it was like the Olin party all over again. OkCupid, on the other hand, gave you a lot more information about the people you were interested in and had tons and tons of interesting people of all types.”

Though college students naturally gravitate towards “free”, Joe Tracy, publisher of Online Dating Magazine, does recommend using a paid service. “As far as safety goes we recommend that people use paid online dating services that require personal information, like a credit card, when signing up,” he says.

If you need help picking a site, here’s the lowdown on some popular ones:

eHarmony: By requiring its members to fill out a 256-question questionairre, eHarmony has one of the most precise matching services on the web and leads to the most marriages. But because it’s got twice as many women as men, has a cost to join, and its average age range is 35-54, it’s probably not the best choice for HC readers.

Match.com: Match.com is a better bet for college students; it has one of the highest percentages of users under 30 and is cheaper than eHarmony. Unlike eHarmony, it doesn’t match you up with people; you set your own parameters and search through their huge database of profiles.

OkCupid: Like Match.com, OkCupid lets you search all their profiles. Unlike Match.com, it’s free—which means it’s the most popular online dating service for under 30s, but it might also attract the most creepers. Founded by mathematicians, the site is statistic-obsessed and constantly trying to use math to help you find a match.

JDate: JDate, the online dating service for Jews, has become the most popular niche dating service online. Though most of its users are Jewish, anyone can use it—and plenty of non-Jews do, either because they just love Jews or because they’ve heard lots of success stories from it. However, it’s pricey, so don’t expect it to be flooded with students.

STEP 3: Creating a Profile

Much like getting dressed up to go out, you can have a ton of fun trying to create a profile that lets you both express yourself and put your best foot forward. “Being an egomaniac, I had a ton of fun creating my profile,” says Anita. “I describe myself as a nerd and tried to appeal to people with similar nerdy tastes, including a picture of myself playing cello and references to my favorite books.”

The “be yourself” clichĂ© is key, especially online, where it’s so easy to pretend you’re ‘perfect’ instead of being the real you. “Show off your personality,” says our expert Joe. “You don’t want to come across as fake because you want people to be attracted to who you are, not what you portray online.”

But don’t write anything you wouldn’t say to someone you just met at a bar or a party! “Avoid negativity and taboo topics,” warns Joe. “Taboo topics include politics and the discussion of other people you’ve met or dated. Some people like to put their life story in their profile. This is a bad idea. It’s important to maintain an aura of mystery so that there is more for someone you are interested in to get to know about you.”

And never underestimate the importance of your picture. “If you’re a woman, the most important thing about your profile is your photo,” says Joe. “By nature, men are visual.”

STEP 4: Meeting Guys
Online

Now that you’ve created your profile, you’re ready to start scoping out potential dates! How this works exactly depends on the site; some try to match you up, while others let you do the searching.

“There’s a couple search options [on the Matchup],” explains our anonymous online dater. “There’s a general search, where you can search things like age range and height range, and there’s a keyword search. Or you can make it more specific and search by ethnic background or how frequently they party. I wanted someone who was between 20 and 25, not shorter than me, and shared some similar interests.” After filtering through her search results, she found a few guys worthy of contact.

Of course, there are plenty of duds online, and the secret is to keep at it until you find someone you like. “Don’t give up easily!” advises Anita. “I had to sift through a lot of poorly-spelled or frightening looking profiles.” Anita was particularly pleased with the “quickmatch” feature on OkCupid, which lets you secretly rate how much you like a profile. If you both like each other, it lets you know!

STEP 5: Meeting Guys
In Real Life!

Congratulations! You’ve set up your account, sorted through tons of profiles, and contacted guys you like. And now that you’ve been talking to one (or a few) guys for a while, you might be ready to meet them meet them.

“In determining if a match is good, it really comes down to a gut feeling,” says Joe. “Does the other person show a genuine interest in you? Can you tell that they’ve read your profile? Do they ask questions based on things you’ve written in your profile? Do your interests match up nicely? These questions can help you decide if this is something you may want to pursue.”

For safety’s sake, be smart about who you’re going to meet. No meeting with the sketchy 40-year-old who, in his first message, tells you you’re beautiful and invites you to his apartment (I didn’t really need to tell you that, right?). But even if you feel like you can trust your guy, Joe recommends arranging your first meeting in a public place, and letting someone else know where you are, who you’re with, and how you met them. And always avoid alcohol on a first date.

The more you know about them, the better. “I had been talking to my current boyfriend for about a month and a half, and he actually had friends who went to my school so I heard he was legitimate,” says Sophie. “We decided that we had been talking for so long why not give it a try!” They’ve now been dating for two months.

Just because online dating lets you meet guys from the safety of your own computer screen rather than at a bar or party doesn’t mean you can slack off when trying to impress! But it does mean that in a few clicks, you can expand your dating circle to beyond your campus’s boundaries.

Sources:
Anita Leechor, Wellesley ‘10
Sophie Jasinski, Mount Holyoke ‘12
Anonymous, Wellesley ‘13
Anonymous, Wellesley ‘11
Joe Tracy, Publisher, Online Dating Magazine and Columnist for Inside the Online Dating Industry http://www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/datingservicereviews/matchcomreview…. http://www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/datingservicereviews/eharmonyreview…. http://www.webpersonalsonline.com/demographics_online_dating.html

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Elana Altman adores alliteration, and thus is majoring in economics and minoring in English at Wellesley College, where she is a senior. At Wellesley, she’s co-editor-in-chief of Legenda, the yearbook, and has occasionally contributed to the monthly magazine Counterpoint and the weekly newspaper The Wellesley News. She’s originally from Glen Rock, NJ, which is 30 minutes from NYC and 15 minutes from 5 different malls. Currently, Elana's in Harrisburg, PA, where she’s a features intern for the Patriot-News. She’s previously interned at The Record and TWIST magazine. After college, she is considering moving to Los Angeles to fulfill her lifelong dream of getting a tan, though she wouldn't mind a job either. Elana enjoys anything with coffee in it, cooking, a few good TV shows, and a few too many terrible ones.