How to Meet Women in College Beyond Parties: Three Settings, the Rule a Bar Doesn’t Have, and the Host Move
College is the easiest place you will ever be to meet people and most men spend it waiting for parties. The three settings that do the work have the same faces every week, and one rule a bar lacks: she lives here.
You meet women in college through the three settings that give you the same faces every week: the class you sit in, the club or team you join, and the dining hall or library you use at the same time each day. Parties are the fourth setting and the worst one, because everyone is drunk and nobody comes back. The method is the regulars’ ladder, faster than anywhere because contact is daily: a sentence before class in week one, names by week two, a study group by week four, the ask by week six. The one rule a bar does not have is that she lives here, which is why the ask is once, with an easy out.
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Which settings are working
- Class. You sit near the same people every week; before and after are two minutes of natural conversation about the thing you are both there for. Working: someone saves you a seat or asks what you got. Not working: you arrive as it starts and leave as it ends.
- Clubs and teams. A society, intramural sport, the student paper, a choir, a volunteering shift. Weekly, same faces, and a built-in after. The best setting college has, and the one most men skip in first year.
- The dining hall, the library, the gym at the same hour. The regulars’ setting: same faces at the same time, with no format, which means the ladder is slower but the odds are good.
- Parties. Same faces only if it is the same house; otherwise strangers, drunk, who do not come back. Confidence at parties has the three moves; the romantic layer here is thin and the next morning is thinner.
- The friend group. By second year this is the setting that produces most relationships, and it only exists if the clubs and the hall produced friends in first year. The warm channel is the longer version.
- The sign something is off: you have been there a term and could not name five people outside your course. The fix is a club, this week.
The college ladder
- Week one: the sentence, in class. To whoever sits beside you, before it starts: “Did you do the reading, or are we both going to nod a lot?” One sentence, every class, to someone different. The first sentence is easier here than it will ever be again.
- Week one: join two things. One with a purpose (a society, a team, the paper) and one with an after (anything that goes to the bar after). Go every week for the term, whatever happens in the first three.
- Week two: names. In class, at the club, in the hall. “I’m Tom, which I should have said last week.” Names stick faster in college than anywhere because you see the same people three times a day.
- Week three: the same hour. Pick a time for the hall and the library and keep it. Regulars recognise regulars in a fortnight.
- Week four: the small invitation. A study group, a walk to the thing, the club’s after. “A few of us are going over the problem set at seven. Come.” To the group, not to one person. Building a social life is the adult version of this and it runs on the same move.
- Week six: the ask, if there is one. To one person, outside the setting, once, with the easy out: “I’d like to get a coffee that isn’t in the library. Totally fine if that’s a no.” If no, the class on Tuesday is the same as last Tuesday, because you asked once and lightly. The regulars’ ladder is the full rung list.
- The host move works in college better than anywhere: a games night in your flat, a film, a dinner for six with “bring someone.” A host in first year is a connector by second year.
- Never ask someone drunk, and never ask when you are. The next morning is in the same building.
- Talk to the men too. The man who talks only to women in a seminar is noticed by the entire seminar within a week.
Before class, two ways
A Tuesday seminar, week four. He has sat in the same seat near the same woman for four weeks and said nothing. There is a party on Friday where he plans to talk to her.
Four weeks of two-minute windows before class, each one free and quiet, traded for thirty seconds in a loud kitchen with alcohol on both sides. The seminar was the setting; the party was the worst version of it.
Tuesday is now slightly awkward, and he still has not said a sentence to her sober.
Same seminar, week one, two minutes before it starts.
One sentence about the thing they are both there for, a laugh, names in week one, and a running joke that will be there before every seminar for the rest of the term. No agenda, no party, no alcohol. By week four, “a few of us are going over the problem set at seven, come” is a sentence to a friend.
Whether it becomes anything is hers to decide over a term of Tuesdays, which is the best position in dating and only college gives it to you for free.
What wastes college
- Waiting for parties. They are the setting with the worst odds and the worst mornings. The two minutes before class are better than any party.
- Not joining anything in first year. The clubs are where the friend group comes from, and the friend group is where second year’s relationships come from.
- The drunk ask. She lives in your building. The next morning does too.
- The second ask. In a bar it costs a no; in a hall of residence it costs a year of breakfasts.
- Talking only to women in seminars. Noticed by the whole seminar inside a week, and it costs you the friends who would have introduced you.
- Changing your hall time to match hers. The regulars’ rule applies: she notices, and it changes what every hello means.
Where this goes
- The ladder reached week six and it was a yes: confidence on a date for the coffee, and keep going to the club.
- It was a no and you share a seminar: “no problem at all,” and Tuesday is Tuesday. The week after a no in person has the first encounter.
- The friend group is the setting now: a friend of a friend has the three meetings, and college is where they happen fastest.
- You are about to graduate and all of this structure is about to vanish: meeting women after college is about rebuilding it on purpose.
Questions
Where do you meet girls in college besides parties?
In the three settings with the same faces every week: the seat near the same people in class, a club or team with a weekly session and an after, and the dining hall or library at the same hour. Parties are the fourth setting and the worst, because everyone is drunk and nobody comes back. The two minutes before a seminar beat any party.
How do I talk to a girl in my class?
Before it starts, with one sentence about the thing you are both there for: “Did you do the reading, or are we both going to nod a lot?” Names in week two, a running thread by week three, a study-group invitation to the group in week four. The ask, if there is one, comes outside class, once, with an easy out, after a term of Tuesdays.
Is it weird to ask out someone from my hall?
It is normal, and it has one rule a bar does not: she lives here. So the ask is once, sober, in private, with an easy out, and a no changes nothing about how you behave at breakfast. What is weird is a drunk ask in a shared kitchen or a second ask after a no, because both follow you for a year.
What if I’m in my final year and never did any of this?
Then join two things this week, say the sentence before every class, and keep a hall time. The ladder runs in six weeks and a term is twelve. The men who wait for the last term to go to parties leave with the same result they arrived with; the men who join a club in October leave with a friend group, which is the thing that outlasts the degree.
