The night before Valentine’s Day, exactly 40 graduate students filed into an Escondido Village room with exactly 40 seats. But they weren’t there to play musical chairs — they were there to go speed dating.

Over the next two hours, as the air buzzed with voices each louder than the next, intrepid singles sold themselves — 20 times over. While some talked about their career interests, others stressed their people skills. One or two might have mentioned their skills in bed. After all, they only had five minutes to get themselves across.

Some participants may have been lucky enough to find someone they wanted to mark down as a potential interest. But others, like Kyle Kelley, were not so fortunate.

“This is how we get through these events,” the second-year electrical engineering student said as he reached for a bottle of wine in between rounds.

Kelley is not alone among single graduate students looking for a date. Many complain about how hard it is to meet other single students — especially those outside of their departments or programs — and how lonely the single graduate life can be.

Why are so many single graduate students unlucky in love? In interviews conducted by The Daily, students blamed a number of factors — including insular graduate programs that make it hard to meet others, a large chunk of already married students who shrink the dating pool and unbalanced male-female ratios in several departments that make finding someone to go out with on a Friday night that much more difficult.

Problems across the board

“There is not a very active dating scene here,” first-year mechanical engineering student Polina Segalova said, echoing the sentiments of others throughout the University’s graduate community.

Difficulties begin at the core of most graduate students’ lives: their department. Because graduate students spend so much time within their departments or lab groups, many complain that it can be effectively impossible to meet people outside their small group of colleagues.

“I haven’t felt like I’ve had that many opportunities to meet people,” said first-year mechanical engineering student Debbie Booze. “There are not that many interdepartmental events for graduate students.”

To make matters worse, the people graduate students do see regularly are often off-limits.

“Just avoid the intra-departmental incest,” said fifth-year economics student Ryan Maddux.

Maddux is not alone in his anathema for intra-departmental relationships. On the other side of campus, Booze agreed, saying there is an “unwritten rule” among her engineering colleagues that precludes any physical or romantic interactions amongst each other.

For the few students determined enough to make efforts to get outside their departmental bubbles, another problem awaits: a significant number of graduate students are already involved.

“All my friends are married or in relationships,” said Nancy Adleman, a fifth-year student in neuroscience.

A large number of committed students exist in almost every graduate program. According to the Graduate Life Office there are 500 married couples on-campus, while many more live off-campus where the University does not keep statistics.

“Only a small percentage of girls here are single, an even smaller percentage of them are cool and an even smaller percentage of them are good-looking,” said Hunter Shain, a first-year student in the 50-student interdisciplinary Cancer Biology program.

Shain’s comments were quickly seconded by a female friend who piped up to say the same is true about Stanford men.

But some are happy

While many graduate students say they feel stuck in their departments and have trouble meeting other single students, some say the experience depends on the program and its male-female ratio.

While those in the engineering disciplines often lament gender imbalances, students at the Law School — where the population is younger and the gender balance more equal — said dating there is just fine.

“The Law School has a healthy dating population,” said Jeff Laretto JD ‘08. “There are lots of people here who want to date.”

He said that despite the school’s relatively small population, students are involved in a variety of social activities, including some regulars at the local bars.

While the Law School has one of the most equal gender balances of any program at the University, students in other departments are flummoxed by the gross disparities between men and women in their fields.

Women make up only 22 percent of students in the engineering disciplines — which comprise more than 3,100 of Stanford’s 8,000 graduate students. Meanwhile, at the School of Education, men are the ones in short supply, making up only 30 percent of graduate students there.

Some students, however, believe the experience is equally dismal for all graduate students, regardless of program. Instead, they say, the real difference lies in the difference between undergraduate and graduate life.

“There is not a vast difference between different schools and departments,” Segavola said. “There is a bigger difference between undergraduates and graduates.”

Graduate students who also did their undergraduate work at Stanford say the undergrad romance scene at the University consists of two distinct phenomena — random hook-ups and very close relationships. In the graduate world, they say, the random hook-ups disappear, leaving long-term relationships as the norm.

“Graduate students are looking for longer-term relationships,” said fifth-year electrical engineering student Tom Lee. “They’re looking for people they might want to marry.”

But those still not ready for marriage are stuck in the middle. The solution, some say, is to take matters into your own hands.

“As an undergrad, there’s almost always a party. You don’t have to be your own social director,” said fifth-year economics student Jonathan Meer. “At the graduate level, you kind of have to.”

Some students said they have made use of online dating services, such as Match.com, while others make an effort to spend time off campus to make up for the lack of an on-campus dating scene.

But while students have tried a diverse array of alternatives, many agreed on one point: undergrads are off-limits.

“They don’t call this place the Farm for nothing,” Meer said, referring to what he believes is the horse-like appearance of many undergraduate girls.

Others were more muted in their advice, saying that trying to date undergraduates can often seem “sketchy” and is usually unsuccessful.

Ultimately, most graduate students said that the only real advice worth giving is to make an effort.

“Quantity begets quality,” said Lee, who completed his undergrad degree in 1998 and has spent nine years at the University. “The more people you go out and meet, the more likely you are to find someone you are compatible with. If you lock yourself in your lab or chain yourself to your computer, you’re not going to meet people.”

Contact Niraj Sheth at nsheth17@stanford.edu.