Have you ever felt like you can’t find your people? University can be a daunting place, filled with a huge mix of individuals with different backgrounds, experiences, and personality types – it’s natural to feel out of place. However, Arsh Merchant, an undergraduate and co-project lead of a research initiative spanning five universities worldwide, called “The Bracket”, strives to change this.
“The story started in my first year when I was in class”, he recalls.
His professor had asked the students to come up with a problem that they would be passionate about solving – after running into his friend, Kevin Spillmann (now The Bracket’s other co-lead), they came across an issue that would resonate with them long after the class had finished.
“When you move to a new place, there’s a system for everything,” he explains to me, “but the most important thing when you come to uni, finding your friends – there’s no system for that.”
The project’s initial phase involved research into which factors drive successful friendships; Arsh revealed that the two most important aspects were shared interests and compatible personalities.
“There’s been a lot of research into matching those with compatible interests”, he emphasises. “The difficult thing now is matching personalities. That’s what we look forward to sharing with the world very soon.”
The Bracket aims to provide a method of matching people according to their personality types, using the OCEAN model. OCEAN (openness, conscientiousness, extroverted agreeableness, and neuroticism) is typically used as a broad and static psychological framework. However, at The Bracket, each aspect of the OCEAN model has been employed as a shifting variable for understanding personality.
“Our research is focused on whether OCEAN can help predict successful connections by matching people based on the principle of homophily,” explains Arsh.
Homophily is the tendency of individuals to engage with those who share the same qualities. Simply, The Bracket Project aims to use OCEAN to match those with similar personality types. The idea is to translate this into an app format, which individuals can use to connect with others.
“When you go into the platform, you’ll see groups of friends and events in your area. These are ranked according to shared interests and OCEAN compatibility,” Arsh explains. “Our tagline is ‘bring it offline’,” he highlights. “The aim is to create a tool that facilitates in-person interaction”.
I asked Arsh about his experience leading such a significant project as an undergraduate student, to which he described his changed mindset. “I wake up every morning now with a sense of drive and optimism that maybe I didn’t have in my first year,” he told me. “I do have to make some sacrifices, but it’s easier to do that when you’re so in love with what you’re doing.” It’s also apparent that the project has provided Arsh and the team with a community of like-minded individuals. “Through building this, without realising, I’ve almost found my own ‘Bracket’,” he recalls. “It’s a pleasure to communicate with these people, even across oceans”.
Image via Stan Murray