Wow, quite a post, thanks for taking the time. Let me see if I can get through some of your points and discuss my take on them.

we ended up talking for over 3 hours into the night

This was friendly, sure, but from where I stand (especially with people my age) that that is a lot more than just friendly. Almost nobody talks on the phone my age from where I'm from, and to talk at that length to that time of night when both of us had class the next morning strikes me as beyond just friendly.

I asked her out for coffee

When I asked her, I mentioned how much fun it was talking to her on the phone and I'd love to keep the conversation going over coffee, something like that. When I suggested a time, she accepted, and also gave me several other times she was available. In my experience so far, very rare for a girl to do this. I did not use the specific word date, you got me there.

When we went out for coffee, we met at the shop at about 9pm after one of her classes, and we talked until the place closed at 1am. Afterwards we ended up texting until about 5 am. We talked about all kinds of things, our families, funny stories, our backgrounds, even jumped straight into religious beliefs, politics. Wasn't a 15 second gap in conversation the whole time, very easy to talk to. As for physical contact, she greeted me with a hug when I showed up, touched me on the arm while talking pretty early on, and I tried to reciprocate the touching throughout the night. Also hugged when we left.

Ended up? Like "hanging out"? Or did you ask her explicitly on another date, using the word "date"?

She was worried about something school-related so I went to campus to help her out. Ended up lasting form about 7pm til 3 am on campus, including the 2 hour dinner. Much like the phone call, not a ton of work was done and we were talking pretty much the whole time.

I thought it was pretty clear she was into me

Touched my arm, sat close, difficult to say if she dressed up, asked me a lot of personal questions. Also invited me to touch her (said "feel my heartbeat" with my hand on her chest). Like I said, no guru at reading signals, but I thought they were good.

She is letting you down gently since you don't seem to understand the proper courtship ritual between men and women. The truth is she can't see herself being in a relationship with YOU right now. If her so-called Mr. Wonderful walked through the door, the man of her dreams, she will date him. I've seen it time and time again.

Interesting. So we can assume that she was being untruthful about that? When I first met up with her on maybe our 4th time together, she was on the phone with an ex and it sounded kind of messy. Does that factor into this at all?

Of course, because you did everything backwards, and now it's your job to move on. She does not want to be friends with a guy who secretly wants to have sex with her, and will continue to try, like every other guy she has rejected.

I'll definitely move on in the sense of looking for other girls. But at this point I really do want to be her friend, and the next time we meet up to do classwork, I'm going to act the same way as I did before to try and show that I meant it when I said it won't change anything. Think this is alright?

Yes. Absolutely. Next time you meet a woman you think you might like, get to know her briefly (5-10 minutes tops) and then ask her on a date. Your window of opportunity ends when you have a phone call that lasts for more than 5 minutes.

This is one point where I think we may think differently. Where I sit, a phone call is a huge deal. I definitely agree with you in the sense of asking her out for a date if we were just texting and I liked where things were going, but when it came to that phone call, it was 3 hours of wall-to-wall conversation, and interrupting it would have felt odd, personally.

Thanks again for your reply.