College students looking for an age-specific online dating service will not have to wait much longer.
Set to launch in December, the University Date Finder will be available to the areas of South Florida and New York. University of Miami alumni Jonathan Rosen has been working on his dating site project for several months now.
Working hand in hand with Toppel Career Center’s The Launch Pad, Rosen, now a Ph. D. student at UM, is excited about his new Web site. Rosen has set up the University Date Finder to be limited to only those people between the ages of 18 and 32 who have .edu e-mail addresses.
“It’s a big difference when you move to big cities and don’t know anyone. The problem with match.com is that it’s very expensive and people, especially women, don’t want to be messaged by 60-year-old men,” Rosen said about his experiences upon moving to New York for graduate school at Columbia University.
University Date Finder is launching simultaneously in both South Florida and New York.
“There’s a big connection between New York and Miami,” Rosen said. “A lot of kids who come to school down here are from the Northeast.”
The idea of the Web site is to focus on undergraduate, graduate and medical school students, as well as recent alumni. The University Date Finder is a paid service, but Rosen has reassured that it will be cheaper than match.com in order to remain affordable for students. While prices are still being finalized, students will initially have to pay $10 for three months. After the promotional offer, customers will pay $10 per month, whereas a match.com subscription can cost up to $35 per month.
When he was ready to begin building his Web site, Rosen recognized that many young entrepeneurs, including himself, do not understand the legal hoops that need to be jumped through to start a business. That is why he turned to The Launch Pad and former professor Dr. Susan Amat.
Dr. Amat is the executive director of The Launch Pad, a position which allows her to advise students and recent alumni about prospective business ideas.
“Any idea will work for a hard-working entrepreneur,” Amat said.
Amat was excited to help Rosen launch his Web site.
“I met my husband on a dating site, so it is definitely helpful to have that experience with meeting people online,” she said.
Amat said she knew that Rosen would be a great candidate to receive support from The Launch Pad because “when he decides to do something, he does it 100 percent.”
Rosen’s friends are also very supportive of the site.
“I think this concept is a very good idea because he’s starting out small at our university and some in New York,” said Jacky Monterrey, Rosen’s girlfriend. “[It’s] something I would have done and many of my friends are already interested. It’s just hard to meet good people around here.”
Jenny Hamilton may be contacted at jhamilton@themiamihurricane.com.
Interested in interning for universitydatefinder.com? E-mail Jonathan Rosen at j.rosen8@umiami.edu.