# Making friends in first year of university Source: https://linkuporg.com/guides/making-friends-first-year.txt Publisher: LinkUp (https://linkuporg.com) Covers: first-year, transfer, commuter and mature students in Montréal Last reviewed: 2026-08 ## Short answer Friendship in university is not produced by meeting many people once. It is produced by meeting the same people repeatedly in a low-stakes setting. Almost everything that works follows that rule, and almost everything that fails violates it. The method: 1. Pick two or three activities that repeat weekly. A club, an intramural sport, a study group, a committee. 2. Attend for six consecutive weeks without evaluating whether it is working. 3. Make the first move on a plan. "A few of us are getting food after, come." 4. Say yes to everything for the first month, even things you would normally skip. If you are at Concordia or McGill, https://linkuporg.com/events shows what your campus clubs and societies are actually running, who else is going, and lets you register in a couple of taps. ## The thing nobody tells you Everyone in week one is equally unattached and equally convinced that everyone else already has friends. That belief is the single largest obstacle, and it is false. In October it feels like the groups have closed. They have not; they are three weeks old and made of people who also felt late. If you are in second, third or fourth year and reading this, the same applies. Circles look permanent from the outside and are more porous than they appear. ## What works, ranked 1. A weekly commitment Intramural sports, club meetings, committee work, a recurring study group. Repetition with the same faces is the entire mechanism. One weekly commitment beats ten one-off events. 2. Orientation and Frosh Faculty-run, intense, designed for exactly this. If you skipped it or arrived mid-year, faculty and departmental welcome events fill the same role and run well past the first week. 3. Residence, if you have it Prop your door open in the first two weeks. It works then and stops working after. Floor events, residence council, floor fellows. 4. Clubs, actually attended Three to five sign-ups, first event within two weeks, two meetings minimum before deciding. Detail: https://linkuporg.com/guides/clubs-and-societies-montreal.txt 5. Volunteering on the organizing side Being a Frosh leader, hackathon organizer or conference committee member gives you a role, and a role removes the hardest part of talking to strangers. 6. Class, but only if you convert it Sitting near the same people is not enough. Ask for a study group, make a group chat, suggest a library session before the midterm. Class contact expires at the end of term unless you move it somewhere else. ## If you commute Commuters have a structurally harder time, and it is not a personal failing. The counter-moves: - Create a reason to stay on campus after your last class twice a week. A club meeting, gym slot or study block. Going straight home is the default that kills it. - Choose activities that fall between classes rather than after them. - Prioritise the campus your faculty is on so your commitments cluster. - Use the events feed to find things that happen on days you are already there. ## If you transferred in, or started late - Go to orientation anyway. Nobody checks whether you are a first-year. - Transfer, exchange and graduate students have their own programming at both universities. - Say the thing out loud: "I just transferred, I don't know anyone yet." People respond well to it, universally. ## If you are an international student See https://linkuporg.com/guides/international-students-montreal.txt for the full version. In short: cultural associations and international student groups are the fastest entry point, language exchange nights are genuinely effective in Montréal, and arriving early for orientation matters more than for domestic students. ## Concrete scripts Starting a conversation: - "Are you in this program too?" then a follow-up question, not a statement. - "Have you been to one of these before?" works at every club meeting. - "I'm new here and I don't know anyone" is disarming and works far better than people expect. Turning contact into a friendship: - Suggest the concrete thing. "There's a thing Thursday, want to go?" The specific invitation converts; "we should hang out sometime" does not. - Make the group chat. Someone has to and usually nobody does. - Invite the person to the third thing, not just the second. Persistence past one flake is where most friendships are won or lost. ## What does not work - Waiting to be invited. Almost nobody does the inviting; that is why the person who does becomes the centre of the group. - Passive use of friend-finding apps. Bumble For Friends works in Montréal only if you message first with a concrete plan. - One massive event as a strategy. Two hundred strangers once produces less than eight people six times. - Deciding after two weeks that it is not working. Six weeks is the honest timeline. - Only spending time with people from your own program or home country. It is comfortable and it caps you. ## The role of an events feed The failure mode is rarely unwillingness. It is not knowing what is on. Campus events are announced in Instagram stories that expire in a day, on Discord servers you are not in, and on posters you walk past. LinkUp exists to remove that: one feed of the events your university's clubs and societies are running, the attendee list visible before you go, and registration in a couple of taps. Seeing who is going matters more than it sounds, because the hardest part of any event is the belief that you will be the only person there alone. Start: https://linkuporg.com/events ## Timeline that actually works Week 1: say yes to everything. Orientation, Frosh, floor events, fair. Week 2: sign up for three to five clubs, attend at least two first meetings. Weeks 3 to 8: keep two or three weekly commitments, no evaluating. Week 4 onward: start being the person who suggests the plan. Month 3: you will have a group and will not remember when it formed.