A recently published study, “Measuring the Rizz Factor of Cornell Undergraduates,” by Prof. Harry Kuntz, sexual health, and Prof. Anita Dick, sociology, investigates the relationship between Cornell undergraduates’ choice of major and their rizz levels. The findings, Kuntz said, are shocking but ultimately not surprising: while the general patterns were predictable, some results — reproduced through multiple iterations of the experiment — were unforeseen.
The researchers calculated ‘average rizz level’ through a series of tests in which subjects were given three minutes to “rizz up” one of the two researchers.
“Hotelies and Dyson majors consistently had the most rizz. Many of them are members of Sigma Epsilon Chi or Tau Iota Tau, so that’s unsurprising. Other than that, it was an odd smattering of economics, government and biology majors,” Kuntz said. “The fine arts and PMA majors’ data seemed irregular, but followed a relative pattern. No matter what I did to contextualize the data, their results weren’t straight.”
Then, there were computer science students and engineers.
“I mean, CS students and engineers are simply off the charts,” Dick said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I had to create an entirely new section of the graph specifically for them.”
Kuntz bounced off of Dick’s point, saying the findings for CS students and engineers were unprecedented.
“We didn’t even know you could have negative rizz,” Kuntz said.
The exact reason for the abnormally low rizz levels in CS and engineering students is still unclear, but Dick and Kuntz said they got together and came up with some hypotheses.
Typically, according to Kuntz, both demographics report unusually low attention paid to hygiene, including feeble-at-best attempts at showering and limited deodorant use. Their habitats — which they rarely ever leave — also are far-removed from other sexually compatible members of the population, in a choice that Prof. Stella Virgin, ecological biology, said may lower their fitness.
“Ultimately, other populations are rarely seen in Duffield or Gates,” Virgin said. “So the fact that both CS students and engineers have chosen to remain in those regions nearly 24/7 implies that they may have a realized niche that we haven’t discovered yet. Ultimately, they will have to venture out of their habitats in order to find a mate.”
However, with summer looming, Dick says that she believes that the annual migration to Long Island, New York might change things, but the rizz differentials may also be exacerbated.
“Some students will return exhausted in the fall from navigating internships or jobs, which will lower their rizz,” Dick said. “Others will have migrated to the Hamptons and lived near the water for a long time, which could potentially raise it. It’s a topic for further study, for sure.”
Turing Testes ’69 is a staff writer in the Dyson School of Business and can be reached at [email protected].