I've been a UCSC student for three years now. When I was choosing my residential college, I had no good way to decide between 10 residential colleges with similar vibes. The official descriptions were vague, and I didn't know any upperclassmen to ask. I ended up scrolling through dozens of Reddit posts and TikTok videos trying to figure out which would actually match my lifestyle.
Last year, I wanted to solve this problem for incoming students. I realized we needed a way to analyze all the scattered information; Reddit posts, TikTok videos, student reviews and map student preferences to college attributes. I had to build a weighted matching algorithm that could balance multiple factors: social vibe, academics, location, dining, housing.
I started by analyzing hundreds of Reddit posts and TikTok videos to build accurate college profiles. The hard part was balancing all the factors; location vs. social scene vs. dining quality vs. housing quality. I grouped questions into themes and mapped responses to weighted attributes for each college. The algorithm emphasizes your top priorities and balances trade-offs.
The next feature was adding real student reviews and testimonials, not just official descriptions. We wanted to be honest about trade-offs; every college has pros and cons. We added side-by-side comparisons so students could see how colleges stack up against each other.
Finally, we were able to add TikTok embeds showing actual college life, because videos give you a better sense of the vibe than text descriptions ever could. We also added resources and tools for campus life – dining hours, transportation, study spots.
To accomplish this, we built it with React 19 + TypeScript, TanStack Router(the goat) for file-based routing, TanStack Query for data fetching, and Tailwind CSS for styling. We used Framer Motion & GSAP for smooth animations and Three.js for 3D graphics. Deployed on Vercel because duh.
After all that, I found that to convert myself as a user I needed it to be fully functional. We needed college profiles with detailed information, comparison tools, and a quiz that actually felt engaging. We analyzed hundreds of data points to ensure accuracy.
We're still working on expanding to more campuses, but we just launched UC San Diego support (in addition to UC Santa Cruz) – now covering 18 residential colleges across 2 campuses. We're also continuously improving the matching algorithm based on student feedback.
All of SlugMatch is free to use. We built this to help students, not to monetize. It's completely unofficial and doesn't affect official housing placement. We're just trying to make the decision easier.
What we learned: Students care most about social vibe, location convenience, and dining quality. Academic requirements matter less than you'd think. The algorithm balances these priorities based on how you answer the quiz.
We'd love HN feedback on: - The matching algorithm (how can we improve it?) - UX/UI (is the quiz engaging enough?) - Feature requests (what would make this more useful?) - Technical implementation (we're happy to share details)
Anyway, regardless of how you feel about college matching algorithms, I wanted to make something that was useful for students. We'd love it if you gave it a spin and we want to share anything we can about the technical side of the product that you might find interesting.