Improving Social Isolation Among College Students with Relatable
Winning Hopelab’s college social isolation prize at our first hackathon, HackMentalHealth
We are Team Relatable and we had an amazing time at HackMentalHealth at UCSF. We are three UC Berkeley students who met during orientation week of freshman year and we love trying out new things together (like this hackathon).
We went into the weekend with the plan to just have a fun time while building something impactful, but our team ultimately left with even more knowledge and inspiration than we had ever anticipated.
We went from having a vague idea of what we wanted to do to a full-blown business model for our platform, Relatable.
What is Relatable?
We created a platform, Relatable, that connects students who experience social isolation or social anxiety with trained mentors on their own college campus. We match students (mentees) with trained students (mentors) based on their preferences (ex. hometown, interests, major) and they are able to engage with their peers in a more open atmosphere. Whether mentees are wondering how to navigate their college coursework, hectic schedule, or find job opportunities, the mentors are available to help them.
Our Inspiration
We noticed that a lot of students become socially isolated in college due to the cyclical nature of going to class, doing homework, and sleeping. Three inherent aspects of UC Berkeley’s campus motivated us to create Relatable.
- Student Motto: “Sink or Swim”
At UC Berkeley, opportunities and resources are abundant; however, they are not readily made available to all students due to the sheer size of the school and student population. A proactive and extroverted student is more likely to reach out to professors, clubs, and internship opportunities on their own and seek the resources that the university has to offer.
In contrast, students who are wary of social interaction or suffer from social anxiety are not likely to go out of their way to approach unfamiliar situations (i.e. cold-emailing, visiting office hours, attending club mixers, etc.) that they are not used to. As a result, students who suffer from social anxiety would be uneasy at the notion of reaching out, thus inhibiting them from using the resources that are available to them and ultimately leading to the noted “sink or swim” pattern, in where students suffering from social anxiety fall behind inside and outside the classroom setting when compared to their peers who do not suffer from social anxiety.
2. Academics: “Extreme Pressure”
Coming into college, many freshman experience homesickness and the stress of finding new friends in conjunction with the fast-paced, intense nature of college academics. Berkeley’s system of having large, introductory “weeder classes” are tough on freshman because they are pressured into getting good grades in order to satisfy the GPA requirements for their major. Furthermore, many of these weeder classes are curved in where only a certain percentage of the class is allotted to receive a certain grade (i.e. top 20% of the class receives an A).
This grading system stimulates unhealthy competition between classmates and makes it common for students to isolate themselves and not give, or ask, for any help with regards to their projects or homework, thus encouraging the mentality of every man for himself. Collaboration becomes less evident as a result of this mentality and makes it more difficult for students to foster positive relationships with their peers in their classes, ergo leading to less social interaction inside and outside of the academic setting.
In the end, students get lost trying to navigate between choosing classes, balancing their work, and finding their passion due to the extreme level of tension that classes place on them.
3. Clubs: “Exclusive”
Clubs are marketed as a fun and easy way to make new friends on campus, but what they don’t tell you about is the grueling application process that you have to go through to make it into certain clubs. Intimidating club interviews, submitting a resume for review and writing personal statements suggesting your immense passion for the club as a whole serve as solid incentives for students to avoid joining student organizations altogether.
As a result, the struggles to join a club only facilitate the likelihood of a college student become isolated on campus. Furthermore, rejections from student organizations on campus can many times negatively impact the self-esteem of earnest freshmen and encourage against reaching out to clubs that they are interested in.
How does it work?
Our app has 5 main features:
- Mentor Profile
This feature allows for an upperclassman mentor to create a profile that exhibits their interests, which can then be displayed on the app for the mentee to view at any time throughout the mentorship.
2. Mentor Training
This process is started once the mentor submits a profile for review. The training includes a personalized phone call with an employee of Relatable for evaluation. If the personality of the mentor aligns with the goals of the platform, the mentor will then need to complete training that can range from 5–10 hours. The training would include learning about social isolation/social anxiety and the appropriate ways to respond and offer help to their assigned mentees. They will also be required to pass an assessment that confirms whether or not they have the required knowledge in order to become an eligible mentor.
3. Mentee Profile
Students who experience social isolation, social anxiety, or just want an outlet to reach out for a casual conversation create a Mentee profile on the app and then choose the preferences with which they want to be matched with their mentor by. For example, an out of state student from Massachusetts may want a mentor who is also an out of state student from the East Coast and would then place “hometown” as the preferred feature that they would want to have in common with their mentor.
4. Chatroom
The chatroom is the main feature of the app that matched mentees and mentors can utilize. The chatroom feature allows mentors and mentees to talk casually with one another, with conversation ranging from how their days have been going to how to apply for summer internships related to their major.
5. External Features
There are three main external features that the platform has:
- Phone Call: The mentee has the ability to call the mentor if there is an emergency.
- Mentor Training Information: The mentor has a separate page in their profile in where they can refer back to their training if they need additional support when dealing with situations they are stuck on.
- Outside Resources Page: The mentee also has a personalized reference page with phone numbers and emails for other university-affiliated and outside-of-university contacts they can also reach out to for support.
Our Team
- Snigdha Allaparthi, Molecular & Cellular Biology, snigdha.allaparthi@berkeley.edu
- Sindhu Goli, Data Science, sindhugoli@berkeley.edu
- Shivani Patel, Cognitive Science, shivanijpatel@berkeley.edu
