“Welcome to Datamatch! Are you ready to fall in Love?”
This is the pixelated popup that thousands of college students around North America saw this week upon registering for Datamatch, a college-specific online matchmaking service started by a group of Harvard undergraduates in 1994. On Feb. 7, the Datamatch survey opened for students at over 45 colleges and universities throughout North America, including the 5Cs.
Every year near Valentine’s Day, Datamatch participants fill out a multiple-choice survey with both personal and college-specific questions. Based on their answers, students get matched with around 10 other students at their college with the choice to receive matches for love or friendship.
Datamatch has some prompts familiar to those who frequent dating apps, such as those about age, location, gender and basic short-answer questions. However, what sets Datamatch apart from other online dating platforms is its 20-question college-specific survey.
The Golden Antlers, the Claremont Colleges’ satirical news publication, creates the 5C Datamatch survey annually. This year, they didn’t disappoint: the endearingly sarcastic questions range from “So many of your freshman year friends don’t talk to you anymore. Why is that?” to “Favorite lyric of the cup song?” to the simple “Drug habits.”
For The Golden Antlers, writing the Datamatch survey is an exercise of working together.
“Anyone who is part of Golden Antlers can add their ideas for questions or answers to a Google Doc,” editor Annie Bragdon SC ’26 said. “It’s really collaborative, with people building on each other’s ideas.”
“For The Golden Antlers, writing the Datamatch survey is an exercise of working together.”
After coming up with a final list of questions and answers, The Golden Antlers team sends their list to the Harvard Computer Society, who have the final say on what goes into the survey. However, Bragdon noted, “The questions are supposed to reflect our communities, and our firsthand knowledge of our campuses gives us the freedom to push back [against the Society’s vetoes].”
Another feature unique to Datamatch is Crush Roulette, which allows users to submit the email addresses of two people they think should be together. Then, according to the Datamatch website, the Cupids (Datamatch’s nickname for their team) “give them a slightly higher chance of being matched by the Algorithm™.”
The Algorithm™ refers to how matches are made, and the Cupids are notoriously secretive about how it works. In the website’s FAQ section, they respond to the question “Let’s just get straight to it. Is the Algorithm™ random?” with “It can be anything you want it to be,” adding that it’s “up to you to contact your matches, and actually make something happen.”
Datamatch may also come with more risks than just the usual stressors of online dating — namely data security. Last year, on Feb. 25, a Harvard undergraduate unaffiliated with the Datamatch team, Sungjoo Yoon ’27, published a website leaking information that Harvard freshmen had entered into Datamatch just a couple of weeks earlier. This included a list of the students’ Rice Purity Test scores, which Yoon linked to their initials. Datamatch users are no longer given the option to enter their Rice Purity Test scores.
“Anyone with 10 seconds can thus pull this sensitive/vulnerable user data from their personal device,” Yoon wrote on his website. Addressing his “Harvard peers,” he said, “it shocks me how many of u were willing to input sensitive data into things like claim and datamatch, even right here on campus.”
Currently, the Datamatch website has the same data privacy disclaimer as at the time of the leak, including the statement that the team “may collect some anonymous stats like usage statistics, but your name and contact info will be completely separate from such reports.”
Despite these data privacy concerns, Datamatch was still very popular this year, with their website boasting over 13,000 registered users as of Feb. 12. This includes 916 Claremont participants or almost 11% of the total campus population, according to the Datamatch website.
However, some participants wished that the survey questions provided more serious personal insight to ensure a good fit between matches.
This concern may be what inspired the distribution of various Datamatch-esque Google Forms surveys via social media throughout the 5Cs. One of these has been circulated so widely on Instagram and Fizz that Annie Voss PZ ’26, who filled out both the Google Forms survey and Datamatch this year, called it “the new Datamatch.”
“I don’t really consider it a very serious thing — it’s more for fun,” she said of the matching process. “It’s fun to see who you get placed with algorithmically.”
Mimi Lopez SC ’26 also participated in Datamatch this year, and although she and Voss reported that they have heard less about Datamatch this year than in previous years, both were optimistic about the site.
“I did Datamatch because I like meeting new people and I’m curious to see new faces,” Lopez said. “I feel like at the 5Cs, once I know about somebody, I see them all the time, so maybe I’ll find more people like that.”
Matches will be released early in the morning on Valentine’s Day, but as the Cupids write on the Datamatch website, “Maybe don’t let the existential dread get you today; go out there and meet someone new!”
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