Nix the movie. For a first date you don’t want to spend 90 minutes sitting together but not talking to eachother.
And don’t worry so much about failure - everyone fails at one time or another, but the biggest fail is not trying.
The advice here seems good, but I’m wondering… there seems a large chance that such an invitation for coffee/lunch won’t be seen as a “date”. If he knows her from class and already has her number, they’re probably at least somewhat friendly. In a school setting, she might see it as a friendship thing rather than a romantic one… so what’s a good way to actually phrase it in such a way that the relationship intentions are apparent? Things can get awkward if they start hanging out and he sees it as a relationship and she sees it as a friendship, for example.
I think the problem with coffee lies in the fact, women will go out with guy for coffee because they enjoy his company, despite having no sexual interest in a guy.
If you ask someone out for coffee you have to be sure the woman understands it’s a date or similar. Otherwise your still just talking to her over a cup of coffee.
My man, you’ve got to just do it, even though I completely understand why it seems like there’s something else to it. The shit’s not complicated; you can arrange the words however you like. “I think that you and I should go on a date, and here is the date activity which would please me;” that’s the idea you’re going for in the optimal scenario. And that’s not so hard, when you really think about it fairly.
It might not be such a bad idea to be sincere about it and say what you really want to say, i.e. to not worry about how you manifest the ideas and worry more about actually getting the real idea across. Ask the question you want the answer to (this rule stops short of allowing “do you like me?” for the preservation of human society, but up to that point you’re cool). It would be a horrible, horrible idea for everyone involved for you to try to slowly bump the temperature of the interactions from academic to romantic.
If you really can’t help over-analyzing it (I do sympathize, believe me) then you could always just actually say “Do you want to go out?” That will get the same response as whatever other sentence you can muster 99.999% of the time; she either does or she doesn’t. The rest is more about dressing it up so you feel cool, which what the hell, let’s just stipulate that none of us are very cool.
Hey, listen, you want to go out sometime?
I’d like to take you out to X museum this weekend.
What are you doing Saturday? I was hoping you and I could go (activity or destination).
Do you want to go grab lunch?
Can I buy you a cup of coffee? (Don’t worry about whether it seems date-like enough; your job is to treat it like a date the whole time anyway).
We should go out. On a date. With each other.
Or, if you’d like a proven winner, the “line” I used the first time I ever asked a girl out was “So um, you want to do something sometime? Yeah?” Imagine the mumbliest, eye-contact-devoidest way to deliver that line, and that’s what I was bringing to the table, but she totally wanted to do something sometime.
LMAO!
You have a sense of humor I see? 
Really, we need to work this into our semi-meme roundup. “How does a nice guy ask a girl out on a treadmill in the Marianas Trench while firing a gun and dropping a bullet?”
Most men ask me out for coffee or something low key. One guy gave me his number but I didn’t call him and he ended up calling me. I didn’t give him my number but give him an A for effort for looking me up. He wants to go to my bible study which is a tad too desperate.
Try and arrange something and exchange numbers.
Good luck!
I don’t ask for dates. I ask for accompaniment during an event. I agree with the lines others have offered that include a time and place, with some wiggle room. “I was thinking of going to the museum on Saturday. Do you want to go with me?” is the best so far. It’s good because it’s a specific scenario that lets her decline for both “I don’t want to date you” reasons and “I can’t that day” reasons.
Where I may disagree with others is that the ask-out is not the time to be deciding if it’s a date or a friendly meetup. It’ll be obvious by the time you get there, and if not, it soon will be. And to me, it makes no difference, really. Either way, I’ll have fun on the outing, right?
Your idea of asking her for academic advice is a terrible, terrible idea. That’s a professional activity while you want a friendly activity. Romance falls into the latter category, so it’s OK to conflate friendship scenarios with romantic ones. But you can’t mix professional and casual/romantic/friendly. It just won’t work. It’ll feel underhanded, trappy, and creepy.
Summary: Give a specific event and figure out if it’s a date later on. Ask her to a social event, not a professional one, or you’ll be creepy.
“…firing a gun and dropping a bullet to scare the burning dog away from the mother trying to lift the car off her Hitler child?”
You just need to get over you lack of confidence around women and dating. You appear to be self confident in other areas of your life. Get over what appears to be a fear of rejection. Your not asking this person that you hardly know to spend the rest of your life with you and bear your children. Your just asking her to a movie or dinner or coffee. If she says no…so what? Find someone else to ask out…there’s no shortage of women in the world. Ask lots of them out, find out which types of girls you like. Dating is not a big deal. Quit making it such a big deal.
I completely agree, if you use study-time as an excuse to set up a meeting then she’ll figure out what’s up, if she’s not interested then she’ll have to keep her guard up at every school-related interaction from then on, because you’ll have already shown that you can’t keep school and dating separate. If you want more low-key conversation then hanging out on campus is fine, but pick something where the purpose is obviously social, like the already-mentioned lunch or afternoon coffee break. And this isn’t to say that school isn’t a good conversation starter, but don’t pretend that academics are the reason you’re asking for time out of her day.
Understood on the academic/social mixing. I asked here because I wanted to check. I now see that it would be a horrible, horrible idea as someone else said.
As I’ve asked a couple other people here, what are the downsides of asking on the phone? There’s now being able to tell if she’s in a good mood or not before I ask her. There’s also the fact that asking out on the phone is less likely to be preceded by small talk; it’s more direct.
Aside from that? I’ve often heard that it’s better in person, how is it better?
By “on the phone” do you mean through text messaging or actually talking? There is a difference here.
And I’m of the opinion that in person is not always better anyways, but then again, I’m in my 20s and not stuck in the past.
EDIT: Asking a girl out in person shows confidence and confidence is attractive and sexy. The downside is that it takes a lot of failure before you start to get into your groove. Using text messages lowers the pressure on her, allows her to respond whenever she’s available and allows the two of you to flirt and chat at your own convenience.
Friend of mine had a similar problem. Brilliant, funny, charming guy who hadn’t had a date in years. So he set himself a goal of asking three (I think) women out every month, and if he was nervous, too fuckin’ bad, and if they rejected him, too fuckin’ bad–he’d just make his way through the three invitations per month and he was done.
At first it completely sucked. Eventually he stopped being such a basket case about the invitations. And then occasionally a woman would accept his invitation.
And the dates were completely fuckin’ awful. He’d cook this marvelously intriguing gourmet meal, and he’d make a total ass of himself, and the woman wouldn’t ever want to speak to him again.
Too fuckin’ bad. He had his three invitations a month to make.
Eventually he stopped being such a basket case about the dates, and he started having fun on them. That’s around the time that he started getting lucky–such as it was. For some reason he found himself going on dates with complete psychos; his stories about these amazing lunatics were hilarious. He never had to take out a restraining order, but it came close.
Too fuckin’ bad. He had to make it through the three invitations a month.
Eventually he asked out a woman who wasn’t a basket case. In fact, she was funny, smart, charming, and hot as hell.
They’re still together. He couldn’t be happier.
I think you’re making a mistake to ask out this girl that you’ve really got a thing for. When I was a socially awkward single guy (instead of the socially awkward married guy I am now), it never ever worked to ask out someone I had a crush on. If you’re awkward, practice your social skills in low-stress situations: it’s the only way to improve.
Because you’re gonna fail. You’re gonna get rejected. If you save these rejections for high-stakes situations, the consequences of failure will seem too great.
So here’s my advice: three date invitations per month.
I mean actually talking.
Text messaging is like e-mail, just worse.
Does it have to be three? Three is such a weird number. Can’t you make it four a month? One per week, nice and clean and organized.
Maybe idiosyncracies like the above are why I’m single. 
EDIT: Text messages are nothing like e-mail. Your funeral if you can’t get with the times.
Bees: Perhaps it is a prejudice I have against text messagings. What’s wrong with e-mail that doesn’t apply to text messages? Unless e-mails are ok now.
Left hand: I understand what you mean about only asking when I care, but what if someone I’m not attracted to says yes? Then I’m dating someone I’m not attracted to. It might be good practice, but it sucks for the other person to lead them on like that.
I disagree with this. You’re saying because he likes her he shouldn’t take the risk of being rejected? To me this is just awful advice.
If you like someone enough, it should be worth the risk of getting rejected to ask them out. Have some balls. Even if you get rejected and have to see the person on a regular basis, would it really be that awful? So you get through a few awkward bumping into each other situations and eventually the awkwardness passes and you both move on. But if she yes, you have a shot at dating someone who you already really like and get along with.
I’m sorry, I just don’t see why it wouldn’t be worth the risk.
I apologize for my tone in my edit of the last post. I just get tired of people saying text messages are useless and stupid when they have very clear and distinct advantages.
I don’t send my friends an e-mail when I’m asking them what plans they have for a specific night. I send text messages. Same goes for them. Short and quick messages get relegated to text messages. E-mail is for longer more drawn out affairs or for something you want to keep around. Text messages are quick and disposable.
Asking a girl out should be a low stress activity (for both parties). E-mails have a certain formality associated with them. If you’re just casually chatting through text messages, that is where a date invitation should come from, a low-key and casual medium.
No, at worst you go on one date with someone you’re not attracted to, and that’s the end of that. Is that really the end of the world? You might be surprised actually. Some people get much more attractive the more you talk to them… some people get less attractive every time they open their mouth.
And you seriously don’t see 3 people a month you find attractive? If that is true, I suspect you of excessively high standards.
That’s the go.
"“I’m going to Neelam for lunch. They do a fantastic vegetarian thali. Do you want to try it?”
“I’m going to the museum on Friday, they have a free talk by French video artist Sylvie Blocher. Are you interested?”