Your roommate was supposed to be your first friend. Your seminar was supposed to be where the rest came from. For a lot of students, neither of those things happens — and the reason isn't you, it's structural. Here's why making friends in college is harder than high school, and how music turns out to be the cheat code.
There is a certain type of friend that you can't replace, friends who knew you when. What this means is that childhood, high school, and college friends are almost irreplaceable; you always have a bond over shared experiences during a certain time. These time periods are emphasized because they are our most formative years. In elementary middle school, we learn to socialize and the rules of society. In high school, we get our first taste of autonomy; we no longer need our parents to drive us places, and for the first time, we choose who we engage with. But relationships are still forced in a way.
Why Making Friends in College Is Harder Than High School
When I was in high school, there were about 15-20 other students in my homeroom class. Every single day, morning and afternoon, I would be in the same room with the same people for an entire year. That type of proximity develops a relationship. Physical proximity has consistently been shown to be the strongest predictor of friendship formation.
Proximity is built into the structure of high schools, but lost in colleges. Students are close in the sense of being on the same campus, but with some classes having 200+ students, no forced proximity; you are not forced to sit next to the same person every day, and the academic load and the drive of high achievers lead students to be overwhelmed with work, missing out on social opportunities.
In a study published in the Journal of Adolescence, students described the unexpected effort of college socialization as “exhausting in every way” and “a huge drain on social energy.” These comments highlight how challenging it can be to adjust to social demands in college.
Everyone looks forward to college, but not everyone is ready for the motivation it takes to thrive socially.
The Freshman Myth: Your Roommate Was Supposed to Be Your First Friend
In my case, I was lucky; my roommates became my first friends. And those relationships were solidified over four years of living together. A lot of students aren't so lucky, as most go into college thinking their roommate will be their first friend, and everything works out from there. The script just doesn't always play out like that. Roommates keep to themselves, have a dreadfully early schedule when you're a night person, or already have a friend they knew from high school.
In 2025, when the Journal of Adolescence interviewed students about their expectations going in, the same pattern emerged again and again.
“Halfway through welcome week, people have already found their friend groups, so it's tougher to reach out and join.” — Student participant, Journal of Adolescence, 2025
Why Feeling Isolated in College Is a Discovery Problem, Not a You Problem
But it's not that college campuses lack social events during social week; the problem is that students can't find the right ones, don't know who will be there, and don't know the overall vibe of each event. Currently, the only way to find your people in college is to actively take a risk and show up to events where you might not know anyone.
Interestingly, live music seems to be one solution for this. Sam Woolfe, a writer, noted that as our society becomes increasingly secular, online, and lacking in ‘third places’, live music events seem to remain an important source of connectedness with others.
How Music Helps You Make Friends in College
In our blog ‘The Science of Music Connection’, we showed how music can be one of the best ways to meet and connect with new people, deepen current relationships, including romantic ones.
Music is a type of social glue; it impacts the brain circuits involved in empathy, trust, and cooperation. In all civilizations around the globe, music has remained an integral part of society for ages. If you didn't get a chance to read our other article, the best way to explain it is through the four mechanisms that purport why music connects us: synchrony, oxytocin, theory of mind, and cultural cohesion. Syncing music with other releases endorphins, creating warmth toward people you're syncing with. Oxytocin, the “bonding hormone,” increases trust and generosity and is directly affected by music. Theory of mind is the idea that music activates the same brain circuits used when we understand others' feelings. Lastly, and the easiest to understand, is social cohesion, shared music taste signals values, making people like each other more on first contact.
How to Use Music to Find Your People in College
So, what does this mean for you? How does it help you?
If you want to start a conversation or break the ice with your first roommate, ask to play a song. If you're romantically interested in someone, share a playlist; it's been scientifically shown to speed up bonding and connection. A Harvard and Columbia study found music taste was a stronger predictor of friendship than shared book taste. That's a notable stat for the performative guys out there.
Live music might be the best way to meet people in your first week of college. Listening together synchronizes brain activity, especially in the reward-processing regions. Friends experience emotional highs and lows together, even without speaking.
Why Live Music Is the Fastest Way to Bond With Someone New
Live music is especially important because of collective effervescence (CE). CE is the combined sense of connection to others and a sensation of sacredness that emerges in shared emotional experiences; live music is one of its most reliable triggers. After studying audience members at a classical concert, researchers found that listeners' heart rates, respiration rates, skin conductance, and movement synchronized across the audience.
“Concert music moves audiences bodily. Music reaches not just the minds… but also their bodies,” Wolfgang Tschacher, researcher.
Music functions as a vehicle for belonging and self-definition; it's how people signal who they are before they have words for it.
The Takeaway
Long story short: Use music to conquer welcome week, break the ice with your roommate, and maybe connect with someone special.