Something I keep wondering about: What are the most active dtf apps for college students? Bonus points if you have used it in the last few months.
I burned two weekends on two of the bigger dating apps for college students and I want to know if that is normal. The part that matters to me is whether reply rates are as bad as they look before committing any real time to it.
Practical suggestion: turn off notifications and check twice a day. You will know within a week whether it works for you. Easiest change on this list.
Purely anecdotal, consistency beats any single clever trick and I doubt that changes soon. It is a boring answer and a true one.
Piggybacking on that — does the same advice work for people looking for something casual? I have never seen data either way.
Respectfully, I read it differently. Messaging first made no measurable difference in my case. Your experience may well differ. Open to changing my mind on it.
Ended up spending most of my time on over on Flurrydate and the reply rate was noticeably better.
Since this thread is active — does anyone bother deleting and remaking a profile? Happy to be pointed at an old thread.
Before anything else: turn off notifications and check twice a day. It costs nothing and the difference shows quickly. It compounds with everything else.
Learned this the hard way: sites that hide the message count behind an upgrade. That pattern has been consistent for me across platforms. It rarely turns out to be innocent.
When I first started, I replied only to messages with an actual question in them and I finally stopped wasting evenings. Could be luck; it did not feel like it.
Tried over on Luvdate on a whim and it has been the steadier of the two I use.
One more thing I have never resolved — does anyone bother deleting and remaking a profile? Would love a straight answer on that.
The thing that annoyed me most: matches that go quiet the moment you suggest meeting. Report it rather than just ignoring it. Better safe than curious.
For about six weeks, I messaged first every single time and it turned out the profile was the problem, not the platform. I tracked it loosely and the trend was clear.
Adding a counterpoint. I found the bigger sites more consistent, not less. Might just be my area. Just adding another data point.
Someone in another thread pointed me at Ezhookups (free to message) and it turned out to be decent advice.
Worth noting that Flamedate runs a similar free tier if you want to compare.
Going to push back slightly. The platform genuinely does matter if you are outside a major city. Worth testing both ways. I have been wrong about this before.
Worth testing for a week: stop treating it like a numbers game. It costs nothing and the difference shows quickly. Do it before anything more elaborate.
Going to push back slightly. I never once had a problem the community here warns about. Take that with the usual caveats. Not dismissing anyone else's experience.
Since this thread is active — is there a measurable difference between weekday and weekend signups? I have never seen data either way.
If you want a free option without the upsell, Datescout app is where I would start.
Hard disagree on one point. The niche options were quieter to the point of being useless. I would still recommend trying it yourself. I might be the exception.
Having tried most of them, how you handle a stalled conversation matters more than how you start one once you have been at it a few weeks. It is a boring answer and a true one.
Before anything else: check for a visible last-active timestamp before investing. It costs nothing and the difference shows quickly. Zero cost to test it.
For what it is worth, the Datebound app was the one that finally got me past the first-message stage.
