Run Game Conversation

How to ask a classmate out

6 min read

To ask a classmate out, spend a few classes talking to them first, then ask once, privately, for something outside class, such as coffee after the lecture or on the weekend, and make it easy to say no. Because you'll keep sitting in the same room, the way you handle their answer matters as much as the ask. This post is for adults and college students.

You have an advantage here that most people don't. You already have a reason to talk, a shared topic and a calendar of repeat meetings. The risk is the same thing: you can't avoid each other if it goes badly, so a calm ask and a calm reaction count for more than a clever line.

Start with the ordinary stuff

Classes give you a free supply of conversation starters, and none of them have to feel like an approach.

Keep these short. A minute before the lecture starts or while packing up is enough. Then do it again next week. How to make small talk has ways to follow up on whatever they answer, and how to talk to girls in college goes through other campus settings.

Research on repeated contact is old but consistent. Moreland and Beach (1992, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology) had female confederates attend a large lecture class of over 100 students 5, 10 or 15 times in a semester, or not at all. Students later rated them from photographs, and the ones who attended more were liked more, even though students didn't recognize them any better. That description comes from a textbook summary, not the paper, and the study was about liking among students, not dating. A related finding from Sandstrom and Dunn (2014, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, abstract only): students reported more happiness and belonging on days when they interacted with more classmates than usual. Showing up and saying hello is worth more than it feels like.

Use group work as your opening

A group project, a study group or lab partners give you reasons to talk that have nothing to do with romance:

Reliability counts for more than charm. Someone who watches you take a group project seriously gets a better sense of you than any line could give them. It also keeps the awkward part small: if they say no, you still have a project to finish together, so act accordingly.

Read whether they're interested

Classmates are polite by default, so friendliness alone isn't a signal. Over a few weeks, notice whether they:

Several of these, repeated, is a reasonable pattern. None of them is a guarantee, and you might be reading friendliness as something more. How to tell if someone is interested goes through the cues. People tend to read each other's liking less accurately than they expect: in Boothby and colleagues' 2018 studies (five studies, mostly students, including dorm mates getting to know each other), people underestimated how much their conversation partners liked them. That's about liking in general, not romance, but it's a reason not to give up after one stiff conversation.

When and how to ask

Wait until you've had at least a few real conversations. There's no magic number. A rule of thumb is that you're ready when you've talked several times, you've seen some interest back, and you can imagine the next class being fine either way.

Then:

Exact lines for different situations are in how to ask someone out, and if nerves hold you back at the last moment, see freezing up before you walk over.

Skip the group chat, skip asking through a friend, and skip the big production. A small ask is easier to say yes or no to.

Seeing each other all term

This is the part that's different from asking a stranger.

If it's a yes, plan it, keep things relaxed in class, and don't announce it to everyone. If you're in a group project together, keep the project professional.

If it's a no, a soft no, or "I'm busy," treat it as a no. Say "No worries, thanks for being straight with me," and go back to normal. A "maybe" with no day attached also counts. Don't ask again, don't ask classmates why, and don't change seats to avoid them. The next class, say hi like you did before. After she says no goes through how to act the next time you see someone, and how to handle rejection covers the part that happens in your head.

If they're quieter than before, that's normal. Give it time. Sitting where you always sit and doing the work shows the no didn't change anything.

A note on instructors and TAs

Everything above is about peers. If the person is your instructor, teaching assistant or someone grading your work, there's a power gap, and schools commonly have rules about relationships between students and staff. That's a different situation, and the sensible default is to check your school's code of conduct before doing anything.

How people meet partners

If you wonder how people meet partners now, one nationally representative 2017 US survey (Rosenfeld, Thomas and Hausen, PNAS, 2019; heterosexual couples only) found that meeting online has been the most popular way couples meet since around 2013, eclipsing meeting through friends. That is a finding about couples overall. It doesn't give a figure for classmates, which is why none is quoted here. Meeting in person through school is one route among several.

What to do next

  1. Say hi to the person this week, in class or in the group chat, with one specific question about the course.
  2. Repeat it next class. Two or three short conversations before you plan anything.
  3. Use a group setting (study session, project) to spend a bit more time together, with everyone invited.
  4. Check the signals after two or three weeks: do they start conversations, ask questions, stay after?
  5. Write your ask: a day, a place, an out. "Coffee Saturday at 11? Totally fine if not."
  6. Plan your reaction. Pick the sentence you'll say to a no, and the way you'll sit and act next class.

If you're working on talking to new people more often, Run Game lets you log an approach as Success or Rejected with an optional note, and Stats shows your totals and success rate.

Sources