A new student-run matchmaking platform, Date Drop, released its first round of pairs on Tuesday, Oct. 7, delivering the promise of love to the nearly 2,500 undergraduates who participated.

The platform, which sends weekly matches to students who opt in, was created in mid-August by junior class president Madhav Prakash ’27 and Henry Weng ’25 M.S. ’26, along with Lucas Gravina ’28 and Morgan Rangel ’28.

“Stanford is the best dating pool most of us will ever have in our lives,” Prakash wrote to The Daily. “It would be a shame not to make the most of it.”

Date Drop builds on last year’s senior-only dating game, Senior Scramble, which Weng developed with the Class of 2025 Council to match seniors with a new date every week.

“Senior Scramble was very successful, with more than half the senior class opting in at least once,” Prakash wrote. “There was a lot of demand to do something like this but for every class.”

As Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) director of social life and inclusivity, Prakash hoped to spread the concept to all undergraduates. “When [Weng] reached out, we thought it was the perfect opportunity to pilot what Senior Scramble would look like if it was all-class,” he said.

Weng, who leads Date Drop’s technical side and wrote all of the platform’s code, said the program uses an algorithm informed by relationship research and student feedback.

“When you sign up, you answer around 50 questions about things like your core values, your processing style and what matters to you — things that affect compatibility,” Weng wrote. “The algorithm also gets better over time — we ask for feedback after each match and use it to personalize future matches.”

Every Tuesday at 9 p.m., students who opt in will receive an email with their match’s name, email address and a few shared interests.

The Date Drop team also added two gamified features to the platform.

“Play Cupid” allows students to submit two friends’ emails to increase their odds of being paired. “Shoot Your Shot” allows users to privately list someone they’re interested in. If both students list each other, they’re automatically matched. The Date Drop team said the first drop resulted in 20 “mutual crushes” through the “Shoot Your Shot” feature.

Neel Ahuja ’29 said he joined Date Drop as a lighthearted way to step away from academic pressure.

“I initially did Date Drop just because there’s so much stress going on with school. This would be one thing to take your mind off that,” Ahuja said. “My initial reaction was a little bit of surprise, but also interest to see the potential.”

His match, Mila Wagner-Sanchez ’29, said she joined for fun. “I did Date Drop more as a dorm bonding thing. It was something that all my friends were doing,” she said. “It was a good way to meet people, something different.”

Wagner-Sanchez said she wasn’t surprised when she saw who her match was. “It was cool because we’re friends, so we already knew each other,” she said. “It wasn’t awkward about who reaches out first.”

The Date Drop team hosted an event at On Call Cafe on Oct. 8 to celebrate the launch. Students who showed up with to the student-run cafe with their matches enjoyed free drinks on the ASSU’s dime.

Ahuja and Wagner-Sanchez decided to attend the On Call Cafe event together. “It was more of a spur-of-the-moment decision,” Ahuja said.

“I love coffee,” Wagner-Sanchez added with a laugh.

Wagner-Sanchez said she might opt in again depending on her workload next week.

“We’ll see what the vibes are,” she said. Wagner-Sanchez added that she would like to see future iterations of Date Drop focus “more on short-term questions than long-term dating ones.”

“I think it could focus more on just meeting people,” she said. “And honestly, it would be fun if it were more like random blind dates.”

The Date Drop team has already made changes in response to feedback, according to Prakash.

“When students said they wanted an option to exclude people who were much older or younger, we added a class filter,” he said. “Frosh resident assistants (RAs) also reached out about making sure first-years weren’t being matched with upperclassmen — we made that a hard line.”

An email sent to participants 24 hours before the first drop, however, noted a gender gap in the dating pool. Eighty-three more women than men had signed up — meaning some students were likely to go unmatched that week. According to Weng, almost everyone who opts in each week is matched, and those who aren’t paired are guaranteed one in the next round.

Prakash described Date Drop as a not-for-profit project whose only costs are printing, an On Call event tab and some other small expenses. “Date Drop has had an incredibly low spend relative to how many people have signed up,” he said.

Weng explained the project’s goal is to help students form genuine connections. “The single most important factor in determining the quality of your life is the quality of your relationships,” he said. “If people end up in meaningful, healthy relationships, we call that a success.”

As another Tuesday approaches, hundreds of students are expected to click “opt in” again for another chance at connection.