The Eight Immutable Laws of MBA Dating

I found this article in old e-zine called MBA Jungle. It thought it was pretty appropriate for the topic at hand and (having completed my first year) pretty accurate.

The Eight Immutable Laws of MBA Dating—You may not love 'em, but you can't love without 'em.

by Elizabeth Angell

Who says business isn't romantic? Profit squeezes, position limits, extension swaps, rollovers, interlocking directorates—horizontal mergers, for heaven's sake. This stuff is downright steamy. Factor in a tight-knit cadre of ambitious, successful people in the prime of life, a pressure-cooker environment, and enough recruiter-sponsored cocktails to irrigate the Gobi Desert, and nature is bound to take its course. We can't guarantee you'll find true love, but based on extensive conversations with MBAs who've been there and, er, done that, we can make a few confident predictions about the dating scene you'll face as a B-school student. Without further ado: the Immutable Laws of MBA Dating. Learn them. Live them. Love them.

1
If you weren't single when you arrived, odds are you will be by Thanksgiving.

Unless you're pretty permanently attached (by, say, a ring) to your pre-B-school honey, there's a good chance you'll break up a few months into your first term. "We called Thanksgiving of first year Black Thursday," says Tracy Lawrence, 29, who graduated from Harvard Business School in 1999. Thanksgiving break presents a handy opportunity to bring messy entanglements to an end face-to-face, but whether the demise takes a week or a year, preexisting relationships are destined to bite the dust. The weight of B-school—its time demands, the insularity of the community, the team bonding—can break through longstanding romantic ties like a wrecking ball.

Christine, 30, a second-year at Wake Forest's Babcock School, managed to hold out until February of her first year before she broke things off with her boyfriend of almost three years—but an end at some point seemed inevitable. "Whenever I'd visit him, I'd have to concentrate really hard to forget about deadlines and assignments," she says. "I'd repeat over and over again in my head, 'Try to have fun.' " Julie Karickhoff, 26, a Georgetown second-year, also bid adieu to a beau five months into her first year. "He thought I studied too hard, that I was being a nerd and overdoing it," she says. "He didn't understand where I was coming from, but at first you don't know if you can compete in business school. I just wanted to make sure I could make it and have good grades." Michael Preis, 27, who graduated from Columbia Business School last spring, also succumbed to the inexorable pull early in his first year. "I had a miserable time trying to break away from classes and group work to be with my girlfriend," he says. "You're making such a huge investment in the network of people at business school. To be torn away from that defeats the purpose of being there."

2
For two years, you will work hard but have a very good time.

MBA candidates quickly discover that business school is tailor-made for dating. "I had one stretch of six weeks where I was seeing three people at once," says Preis. "I was trying to keep track of who was from where, which town, which college, who had the dog, the cat, the parrot. But you can't keep that kind of pace up." Probably not—but chances are you will have some juggling to do. "You're in a social environment, surrounded by people who are smart, motivated, the right age, at the right time in their lives, and with the free time to date," says Harvard grad Lawrence. And you will have a lot in common with them: similar work experience, similar aspirations.

What's more, MBA candidates come to school prepared, in a sense, to work the room. They know that they have only two years to nurture the precious connections that can make a business degree so valuable. And B-schools take advantage of and reinforce their students' networking instincts. At most schools, there's a constant barrage of mixers, cocktail parties, and other assorted meet-and-greets. Each class or section is likely to have a student appointed to organize parties and recruiting events. "I worked harder and played harder than I ever did when I was in the working world," says Paul Campbell, 35, who graduated from the Thunderbird School last spring after attending his fair share of parties. Liz Williams, HBS '99, met her husband, Ather, when he was the social chair of her section. "He would always try to convince me to go to pub night," Williams says. Finally he succeeded—and the couple were married by graduation. Most events are designed to ultimately get you a job and a Rolodex full of precious contacts, but they just might land you a date, if not a spouse, as well.

3
Women are scarce and therefore in demand. Men are a plentiful commodity.

The B-school dating scene (heterosexual, anyway) is a good case study on that old rule of supply and demand: What happens when a commodity is scarce and its consumers are plentiful? Men outnumber women by as much as two to one in many MBA programs, which means women can be picky. "The numbers game is horrible for us," says Mike Aaronson, 25, a Wharton second-year who writes a column that occasionally addresses dating issues for the campus newspaper. "A lot of guys go outside the B-school community for dates. Having other grad schools around helps—nursing students are popular, for example." For women, the attention can be flattering, but that doesn't mean they find B-school to be a feast of eligible men.

4
In the dating world at large, an MBA makes a man more appealing, but not a woman.

When men announce they're getting an MBA, prospective dates tend to respond well. "Those three letters go a long way," says Sean Quinn, 26, a Georgetown second-year. "The salary is probably a big motivator. I'm not saying that if I was in the Peace Corps I wouldn't be able to meet women, but most seem more eager for conversation after hearing about the MBA." Unfortunately, many female B-schoolers report that a lot of men aren't comfortable with ambitious women. "They may be perceived as kind of hard-core, a little more intense," says Aaronson. Whether or not that's so, many women have anecdotes about telling a guy they're in B-school only to bring the flirting to a grinding halt. "There are men who are intimidated by women with MBAs," says Liz Williams. "When I was a first-year at HBS, I came home at Christmas and met someone at a bar. When I told him I went to business school, he basically walked away."

5
Everything—including romance—moves much faster in B-school time.

If you do decide to start seeing someone, keep in mind that the business school metabolism for romance is very fast. A bunch of goal-oriented type-A personalities all in one place means that if a relationship is destined to be nothing more than an insignificant fling, it'll be over in two days, not two weeks. If it's true love, it'll turn serious over the weekend, not after six months. "At work, you see more of your boss than your girlfriend," says Matt Gorin, 27, HBS '01. "But business school is kind of an incubator for love and dating. Even though I've only been dating my girlfriend for a year, it feels like four years. It's like dog years." Julie Karickhoff, from Georgetown, agrees. "I've been dating my current boyfriend for more than four months, and he just bought me a plane ticket so that I could meet his family. Two months into our relationship he celebrated Easter with my parents. School itself is incredibly fast-paced, and that urgency spills into your social life. My ex-boyfriend would never have met my parents so quickly."

6
People will warn you not to date someone in your section. You will do it anyway.

Every new student is given this handy little piece of advice upon arrival—and almost every one of them ignores it. Business schools have learned that people work well in small groups, cranking away for long hours on projects with just a few of their peers. That means lots of late nights, lots of stress, lots of bonding, and many celebratory evenings out with the same group of people. If you like someone on your learning team or in your section, chances are you will indulge. "At first, I heard that dating your sectionmate was taboo," says Liz Williams, whose future husband was in her section. "If you have a bad experience, you have to deal with that person for the rest of the year." But if all goes well, of course, you get to deal with that person for the rest of your life. Should you take the plunge, you'll have to prove to your sectionmates that your affair isn't going to be a distraction to everyone.

Allison Blumenthal, 30, who graduated Columbia Business School in May, met her boyfriend in her section. If such a relationship ends, she notes, it's not just the two people involved who will suffer. Everyone who has to deal with an imploding romance will suffer as well. "Dating while in school takes a certain conviction," says Blumenthal. "I have to say, without great maturity, it would be extremely difficult to manage a breakup."

7
You will attempt to have a secret relationship, and you will fail.

Business school classes are relatively small. Everyone attends lectures and sections in the same buildings and eats in the same off-campus restaurants. Nothing will be confidential for very long. "There's a high school mentality," says Raj George, 27, who earned his MBA at Columbia last spring. In his first year, George attracted the interest of a classmate; word of the crush soon made it into a campus gossip column—the newspaper's editors even tried to get George and the woman to date. "Everyone knew about it, and when we showed up at a dance together, they were all watching. We couldn't let anything develop naturally." UCLA Anderson second-year Kerry Edelstein, 26, says that's typical. "The gossip mill can ruin something before a casual relationship even begins," she says. "There's so much pressure that you need to keep it under wraps until you're a couple." Unfortunately, even if you try very hard to keep your trysts a secret, you will likely fail. "You eat lunch with someone on campus a couple of times and the buzz is out," says Karickhoff.

8
No matter what you think, no matter what people tell you, this is solemn business.

The social life of your average business school student may seem a lot like being back in college or high school, but don't be fooled. For MBAs, love, like everything else, is an intense and goal-oriented pursuit. A generation ago, men and women saw their undergraduate years as prime time to choose a mate. Many a woman who attended college in the '50s and '60s joked about getting her MRS—and precious few were single for long after graduation. Today, graduate school has shouldered that same mantle for a lot of single 20-somethings. The majority of people entering MBA programs are sneaking up on 30. They've made some money and had a few significant others. Now, biological clocks have started ticking, and people are eager to settle down. "When you get out of school, it's the beginning of the rest of your life," says Matt Gorin of HBS. "A lot of people start that off by getting married." Gorin found a serious girlfriend in B-school, and the two are planning to move in together. "When you've spent two years in this environment," he adds, "by graduation you tend to know one way or another which way things are going."

This article originally appeared in the September 2001 issue of MBA Jungle.
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