While watching the CW tonight, you might recognize the balding guy wearing a green Science and Technology Wing T-shirt from your Computer Science class last year.
And that's because 2006 Engineering alumnus Will Frank is a contestant on the hit reality show Beauty and the Geek.
The show matches 10 couples of "gorgeous but academically impaired women . with brilliant but socially challenged men to test intellect and social skills," according to the CW Web site. The "geeks" compete in a series of tests until one remaining winner walks away with $250,000 in the end.
Frank, 23, decided to audition for the show after hearing about the casting call on the radio.
An avid lover of filking - the performance of science fiction and fantasy music - Frank's geeky qualities include living on a "healthy diet of consuming several books a week," he said.
"You get a range of guys in the auditions. Sometimes there are people who think they're really smart and are kind of pretentious, but Will was very down to earth," said Nate Dern, who helped cast the show this year.
Dern, a 2007 Harvard University alumnus and a runner-up on last season's show, is most well-known for singing in a Star Wars tribute band.
Show officials say that it's no coincidence that Frank and Dern both attended Ivy League schools.
"We absolutely go after Ivy League schools," Geek casting director Allison Kaz said.
In fact, this season boasts another representative from the Ancient Eight - Princeton University astrophysics graduate student Joshua Green.
Other previous Ivy contestants include last year's Alan "Scooter" Zackheim of Harvard, and first-season grand-prize winner Chuck Munyon, a 2006 Penn School of Medicine alumnus .
"I think that Ivy League students are probably geekier than the overall population because being a geek goes along with being high-achieving," Dern said.
In preparation for this season - the show's fourth - the CW interviewed people on the street about their perceptions of the term "geek."
The most ubiquitous answer: "socially awkward," Dern said.
"I really had no doubts that I was a geek [before the show], . and I've always been in the geek-pride camp," Frank said.
And how do the show's female players, the so-called "beauties," compare to Ivy League gals?
"I didn't have many tropical models at Harvard with me," Dern said. "But I wouldn't say the girls on the show are hotter . or dumber than girls at Harvard, just different."
As far as Penn girls, Frank added that, "even though many were attractive, . they wanted to learn, and they weren't satisfied with being pretty like some of the girls on the show."
Still, Ivy League women need not despair.
If you tune in to the CW tomorrow night at 8 p.m., you might catch Yale University junior Victoria Marshman walking the catwalk on American's Next Top Model.
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