America’s Hottest New Dating Sites: Business School Campuses

11 Mar 2020

America’s Hottest New Dating Sites: Business School Campuses

Re: Sarina Richard (MBA 2015); Andrew Richard (MBA 2015)

Topics: Education-Campus Life Career/Life Experience Relationships-Partners and Partnerships

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The Wall Street Journal had a story this week on the growing trend of couples who meet while at business school. The piece argues that the trend is due in part to growing gender parity at business schools, noting that women represented less than 30% of MBA students in 2005, according to the Forté Foundation, while that number is about 40% today.

The Journal highlights HBS couple Sarina Richard (MBA 2015) and Drew Richard (MBA 2015), who met during a class discussion group. Why does HBS make for such fertile ground for couples?

M.B.A. students in these small-group settings often share life experiences, fears and failures, Ms. Richard said. Getting to know each other in a business-school group seemed easier than dating someone off campus, she said. Neither planned to date. Ms. Richard said something sparked when Mr. Richard talked about working as a military officer flying Apache helicopters in Afghanistan. “I’ve never met anyone like this before,” she recalled thinking.

The odds for meeting someone while at HBS, the article says, favors women. “A campus study of its business-school alums found that a third of women, both baby boomers and Gen Xers, are married to, or partnered with, other Harvard Business School grads,” the article notes. “It is 15% for similarly aged men.”