Brown Grad Launches Elite Dating Service for Ivy Leaguers

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Maggie Lange, GoLocalProv Contributor

In The Social Network, one of the purported inventors of Facebook uses an email address to explain why his social media site will prevail: “Harvard.edu.” The words drip with elitist arrogance but they hold some truth. By making social media exclusive, they made it attractive.

IvyDate, a newly founded dating Web site aimed at graduates of the Ivy League, hopes to capitalize on the intriguing effect of selectivity. The dating site began accepting applicants a few months ago and will begin suggesting possible dates in a couple weeks.

Beri Meric, a co-founder who graduated from Brown five years ago, said there was no online dating platform that connected men and women who were trying to date “highly intelligent, sophisticated singles.”

A narrow pool of "exceptional singles"

“Where do you go if you want to find someone who has a love of learning, intellectual curiosity, and drive?” asked Meric. He hopes that IvyDate will provide a narrow pool of exceptional singles within the growing number of online daters in the United States, a number that is now estimated at 40,000.

In order to provide an elite pool, applicants must emerge from a screening process. Even if you have attended one of the elite eight Ivies, your profile will still be reviewed in order to ensure that you are qualified to join members who are “interesting” and “high quality.”

Polite but mildly standoffish

The tone of the site bears a combination of welcoming encouragement and deterring superiority. After registering, a polite but mildly standoffish email informs you that your application is being evaluated. The successful registration email reads like a rip-off from the acceptance letters into these universities: “We are writing to confirm that you stood out amongst thousands of highly qualified applicants. We believe you have a number of qualities that make you a truly exceptional single, and we are delighted to welcome you to IvyDate.”

IvyDate certainly celebrates a little dose of elitism—if you recommend other qualified singles, you are entered into a lottery to win a case of Dom Perignon Champagne.

Matches focused more on intellect

Upon approval, a new IvyDate member will begin receiving matches on a regular basis. Meric said IvyDate’s matching will be more focused on intellect than other leading sites, like eHarmony or Match.com. “Their matches are more superficial and choices are based on photographs,” he said.

Though the pairing will be based on personality, the profile questions don't exactly get into subtle terrain. The topics sound like essays for an introductory language class: three adjectives to describe yourself, your ideal vacation, your favorite pet, and what you would bring to a desert island. The portions that asks for graduation year, major, and degree seem like a CV template. (There are few serious questions—how many kids you want to have, what you like to spend money on, charities you give to, a proposed first date.)

The eight, plus five

If you’re out of the Ivy loop, you’re not totally out of luck. The Web site invites alumni and students from the eight Ivy League schools, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, and the London School of Economics, but applicants that didn’t attend one of the thirteen accepted schools can still apply. According to Meric, their profiles will be marked as “Interested Singles.”

“The logic is that not only people at these thirteen schools are exceptional, but the interested singles that sign up are driven and interesting,” said Meric. “We are using educational achievement as verifiable indicator of positive qualities, kind of like a signaling effect. On IvyDate you get high-caliber singles.”

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