Nobody wants to be shallow. In college, we consider ourselves open-minded, intelligent connoisseurs of the finer things in life, not superficial. But when it comes down to it, when someone sidles up to you at the bar saying something or another, whether you stay to talk has lot to do with whether or not they are attractive.

It’s not that you’re shallow. It just so happens, though, that you tend to miss your friends when you find yourself next to ugly people. That person may have been nice, they may have been smart, but probably not. It didn’t seem like it, at least.

Now, if you look around, you’ll find that every system works like this; there are always one or two scales that you are judged on, and if you fail on that measure, it will probably not matter what else you have going on.

GPA and GRE scores, for example, determine whether or not the stereotypical fat, balding men that make important college decisions will even read your essays to see what you’re about. They are the graduate school equivalent of a slim figure and good teeth, respectively. You may be really nice, you may be really smart, but, from their perspective, probably not.

It’s not that schools are shallow, it’s just that, in the five minutes it takes to give your application the once over, you didn’t seem attractive. The sad truth is if you only get one glance, you aren’t attractive.

When it comes to dating and graduate school nobody will admit that they are superficial, but they also don’t hide that very well. Everyone knows this, and that is why in both realms, the strategy is the same: Make yourself attractive.

You can see this on any night while walking down Green Street. People go out of their way to look attractive to the other sex. The men, from the smell of it, pass around the same bottle of Abercrombie & Fitch cologne, buy some cargo shorts and a striped button-up shirt. The women grab an empress-waisted dress, get their hair freshly highlighted and dab on some glittery lip gloss. They all head out to a bar so loud that they don’t have to worry about being able to talk to people and try to find someone that looks like they’re sensitive, smart and funny.

The homogeneity of the people in the bars is analogous to the homogeneity you see in graduate school applications. The stunning combination of a 4.0 and top-quartile GRE score are not hard to find in a stack of applications, just like tanned skin and expensive clothes aren’t hard to find in a bar. It is the next day, after the students in the bar have coupled off and the students applying to school have been accepted or rejected that everyone gets to live with their decisions.

Some of the couples who hooked up during the evening end up happy with their decisions, while, as anyone who rides the 22 Illini has overheard, some people aren’t as enthusiastic. The same is true for graduate admissions decisions.

Admissions folk say that the reason they care about GPA and GRE so much is because they are indicators of what a person is really like and how they will perform. Anthropologists say that looks indicate mating suitability. Both, however, are entirely fallible measures. Cute people can have diseases and people with 4.0s could just be bookworms who lack original thoughts or ideas and therefore will never innovate.

It is nice that people being as shallow as they are does give everyone a chance to compete fairly. The goal is neatly defined, so everyone can work toward it if they want. It really is quite democratic.

The only gripe I have is that it tends not have the effect that people would hope it would have; hot people can make really good or really bad partners. But that’s OK with me. The reality is that you can either win at the game or lose at it, but you don’t get to set the rules.

So tonight, I’m heading out to buy some cologne before I head home to study for my midterms.