When a woman at Harvard Business School breaks up with her boyfriend, it’s cause for celebration. Not because all men at HBS are soulless sharks who delight in a shattered relationship, but at the elite school where men outnumber women 60/40, a breakup means one more woman is available for the wifing.
“There were a lot of guys that were desperately looking for girls,” Lisa,* 29, who graduated from HBS in 2012, told Cosmopolitan.com. “As soon as a girl became single, a group of guys would sort of circle her. You had to bat them away.”
While a much-buzzed New York Times report about gender equity (or lack thereof) at HBS suggested that female students were meek members of the school’s dating culture, worrying that “seeming too ambitious” would hurt their romantic prospects, recent HBS graduates say male students were equally keen to finding lasting love among the future Sheryl Sandbergs and Mike Bloombergs of America.
“The majority of my friends at business school were dudes and they would always talk to me about how they just wanted to find a girl and that there were great girls at HBS, but ‘she doesn’t want me,’” Lisa, a guys’ girl who met her fiancé at HBS, recalled. “Guys were frustrated that they weren’t finding that ‘one’ either. More often than not, because there were more guys than girls, they were more frustrated.”
“I didn’t think of dating at HBS as desperate women looking at their last chance to get their “M-R-S” degree,” she added. “Not at all.”
Still, through shades of Princeton Mom, the Times piece spotlighted Neda Navab, a 2013 HBS graduate who chose a group date at an Ethiopian restaurant over prepping for an important class the next day, a dicey decision she explained was rooted in a fear that HBS could be her “last chance among cream-of-the-crop-type people.” But this palpable sense of pressure wasn't reserved for women at HBS.
“A lot of guys, myself included, felt the stress of finding someone,” Neil*, 29, a 2012 HBS graduate, said. “You have 900 people that are your age, they’ve all come from highly-coveted jobs, and most people are pretty good-looking—they’re attentive, Type A people who really groom themselves. It’s almost a perfect dating experiment. Of course I thought, ‘This is an excellent place to try and find someone.’”
As for the suggestion that ambitious HBS women would turn off their male romantic prospects (the Times quoted one male subject as commenting on a female classmate: “She’s kind of hot, but she’s so assertive”), Neil said it was quite the opposite.
“The women in my section were some of the smartest and most capable I’d ever met,” he said. “If you wanted to be with someone who was as intelligent and driven as yourself, which I do, this was a perfect opportunity."
Neil dated at HBS, but didn’t find a serious girlfriend. Maybe, as Lisa points out, because many of the limited number of women were “taken.” In her 90-person section, for example, she says “many” of the 35 or so women “were either in serious relationships or married.”
Though recent male HBS students were described as blasé about dating—reportedly hazing female students like overgrown frat boys and openly playing “fuck, marry or kill"—it was a pair of male 2011 Harvard MBAs—Philipp Triebel and Beri Meric—who launched IvyDate, an exclusive members-only online dating site, as second-years in 2011. (It’s since morphed into a networking site, IvyConnect.) Their mission, according to their Website, included helping Ivy singles "connect with remarkable people who make a difference in the world," other men and women who possess "intellectual curiosity and outstanding character." In other words, meeting (not fucking or killing) their equals.
"In my experience, HBS women were deeply respected by HBS men," Triebel told Cosmopolitan.com. "Most if not all of my single HBS friends would be delighted to find favor in their eyes."
Lisa acknowledges that it may sound “really nerdy,” but says she and her fiancé fell in love in class, bonding over work in their section and parties afterwards.
“I’ve seen a lot of couples come out of HBS and I think that’s because you sort of come out with similar mindsets and similar goals,” she says.
"The irony of this whole sweeping gender equality experiment," according to Hattie*, 29, a 2011 HBS graduate, "is that a lot of guys and girls equally wanted to find someone. I dated some guys who were a little too into me a little too quick, and I’m sure they dated girls who acted similarly. You’re getting into your late 20’s and your friends were starting to get married and both my girlfriends and my guy friends were talking about wanting a relationship.”
One year after graduation, Neil is still single—and a little nostalgic for the girls of Harvard Business School.
“The educational level of the city where I live now is 100-percent different than the people at HBS. It’s not the same mecca of academic excellence,” he said. “I look back and think, ‘Wow, was that a great dating pool? Absolutely.’”
Follow Michelle on Twitter @michelleruiz.
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