Are you good looking? Are the jerks good looking? In high school, I remember that there were very few extremely attractive boys, a huge amount of plain lookers with no social skills, and a few really unattractive guys. The ones I was into were the longhairs because 80s rock was in. All the girls wanted the longhairs. So, it was about being a Rock and Roll fetishist, not about deliberately picking jerks out to date so we could make the nice guys cry.
So, when I was in school, the girls went for guys with a claim to fame like football captain or rock star wannabe. Maybe you just need a gimmick like being in a band, or getting really pretty hair and clothes. Even the most booger picking guys in my high school seemed to do great if they had pretty hair and clothes.