If you're an introvert and you're about to step into one of the biggest changes in your life, you might find yourself anxious about making friends. And rightly so. You're usually moving somewhere very unlike your home — or at least filled with people who are nothing like your friends and family back there. With stressful academics, a new living situation, and probably the most drastic separation from your family you've ever experienced, the transition into college is genuinely hard for a lot of people.
Here's the thing nobody really tells you: it's also hard for most of the people around you, even the ones who don't look like it. The person laughing loudly at dinner in the dining hall on the first night might have cried in their room the night before. The group that looks like they've known each other for years has, in many cases, known each other for four days and is also figuring it out.
This is useful to know, because the loneliness of the early weeks in college — the eating alone, the quiet dorm room, the group chat you're not part of yet — can feel like a personal failure when it's actually just a universal condition that nobody posts about.
PS: If this is the part you're most anxious about, our adult friendship memes are an oddly good reminder that you're not alone in how you feel.
Your old friends are still your friends. But make new ones anyway.
You may be inclined to lean on your parents, siblings, or the friends at home who are going through the same things you are. That's reasonable and you should absolutely keep those relationships. But if you want to succeed in college, you should also embrace your new environment — because you'll benefit much more from a support circle that's geographically close to you than one that's three time zones away.
That's scary. It's supposed to be. But it does get easier, and faster than you probably think it will.
Where to find potential friends
Your roommate.
They're the person you'll spend a statistically significant amount of time in proximity to, whether you intend to or not. Roommate horror stories are everywhere online, but the reality is more often just two people who have different sleep schedules and some friction over dishes. It is worth at least being friendly — and if you're lucky, you end up with a good friend to come home to at the end of every day. Don't assume it won't happen. A lot of lasting college friendships started in a shared room with two people who had nothing in common on paper.
The orientation period is also worth taking seriously, even if it feels corny. It's one of the only times in your college career when everyone is equally new and equally looking for connection. The window where it's normal to just go up to a stranger and say "hey, what's your name, where are you from" is surprisingly short. Use it.
But if you're navigating the roommate side of making friends in college right now, here's how to find a good one.
Campus events and organized social life.
Gatherings, official parties, department socials, late-night study breaks in the dorm common room — these are not the most glamorous settings, but they're reliable places to find people who are, like you, showing up hoping to meet someone. Don't be afraid to share your Instagram or your phone number when you meet someone you like. It may sound obvious, but it's easy to have a good conversation with someone and then never figure out how to find them again. Take that extra five seconds.
Student organizations.
This is the big one, and it's consistently underused by people who feel like they don't fit the mold of whatever club they're considering. Here's the thing about student organizations: they exist specifically to attract new members. They want you there. College campuses have more people who share your interests than you probably realize, and there are clubs for genuinely surprising things right next to the ones that take themselves very seriously. There is something for almost everyone if you actually look.
These clubs matter because they give you what's hardest to manufacture in college: repeated contact with the same people over time. You don't form friendships from single conversations. You form them from seeing the same person every Tuesday for four months until you know their coffee order and their thing about their roommate. Clubs provide that structure automatically.
The friendships you build in college are also the ones most likely to survive into adulthood — we've written about how to maintain those friendships once you graduate if you want to think ahead.
Your classes.
The most guaranteed social interaction you'll get — and the most underrated one. Group projects are obvious opportunities, but so is just sitting next to the same person a few times in a row, or asking someone what they thought of last night's reading. Academic advisors sometimes organize events through your major, which are worth attending precisely because they're smaller and more specific than campus-wide events. The people in your major are going to be in your orbit for four years. Starting early matters.
The part nobody really talks about: the first few weeks are the hardest.
There's a specific emotional experience in the early weeks of college that is hard to describe if you haven't been through it and obvious in retrospect if you have. It's the feeling of being surrounded by people — in the dining hall, in the dorms, on the quad — and still feeling completely alone. Like everyone else already has their people and you missed the moment when that was supposed to happen.
You didn't miss it. The moment is ongoing. It happens at different speeds for different people, and the people who seem like they already have their group often don't, not really, not yet.
What helps is just staying in motion. Saying yes to things even when you don't feel like it. Leaving your door open in the dorms if that's socially normal in your building. Eating in the dining hall instead of your room, even alone, because you can't meet people from your room. Showing up to the second club meeting even if the first one felt awkward.
None of these are magic. They're just the conditions under which friendships become possible.
Casting a wide net — and then narrowing it
The early goal is breadth, not depth. You're trying to find the people you click with, and you can't do that without exposing yourself to a lot of people first. That means being social with people you sort of like but don't totally connect with. Going to things you might not have chosen independently. Being a little more open and a little less selective than you would be once you have an established social life.
Once you find the people you actually like, the challenge shifts. If you leave people hanging, wait too long to respond, or disappear into your room for weeks, people drift — not out of malice, but because everyone is busy and distracted and also figuring it out. Reach out. Ask new friends to get lunch between classes. Suggest a study session for the class you're both suffering through. The initiative doesn't have to be dramatic. It just has to happen.
A useful heuristic for figuring out who to invest in
Here's a question worth asking yourself about the people you're meeting: would you share a drink with them, and would you trust them to take care of your puppy for the weekend?
It sounds silly, but it maps onto something real. The drink question is about whether you actually enjoy being around them — whether there's ease and warmth and something you'd call fun. The puppy question is about character and reliability. Some people pass one test but not the other, and that's useful information. The lunch friends who are good energy but not people you'd trust with something you love. The solid, responsible people who are a little boring but genuinely kind. Both kinds of people are worth having around for different reasons.
The people who pass both tests — those are the ones to keep.
One more thing
The best tip, and the hardest one to actually internalize: don't worry about it too much.
Not because it's not hard. It is hard, at least for a while. But the crucible of college puts an enormous number of people who are all slightly lost in the same place at the same time, and that is actually a remarkable condition for friendship to form in. Some of the people you meet will be great. A lot will be forgettable. Some won't be nice. But of all the ones who leave a lasting impression, don't be afraid to go up and say hello.
The odds are better than they feel. And this terrifying journey is genuinely easier with people in it.
