Seventeen year old Cassie Matthews has been branded the typical 'nerd' since fifth grade. She's never given a second thought to how she looks or what she wears. Desperate to get into Harvard, she devises a brilliant - albeit crazy - scheme to set her essay apart from any one else's. In a frantic attempt at securing her future, Cassie is willing to spend her last year of high school miles from home, in a foreign town with strangers, pretending to be the typical 'dumb blonde'.