Love, Sex, and Derivatives

Who says business isn’t romantic? Profit squeezes, position limits, extension swaps, rollovers, interlocking directorates—not to mention horizontal mergers. 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 Eight Immutable Laws of MBA Dating. Learn them. Live them. Love them.

1. If you weren’t single when you arrived, 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. That first Thanksgiving presents a handy opportunity to bring messy entanglements to an end face-to-face (“We called it Black Thursday,” says Tracy, a graduate of Harvard Business School), 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 smash longstanding romantic ties like a wrecking ball.

Christine, from 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 the end 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 in my head, ‘Try to have fun.’” Julie, a graduate of Georgetown’s MBA program, also bid adieu to a beau five months into her first year. “He thought I studied too hard, that I was being a nerd,” she says. “He didn’t understand where I was coming from, but at first you don’t know if you can compete. I just wanted to make sure I could make it.”

“I had a miserable time trying to break away from classes and group work to be with my girlfriend,” says Matt, a Columbia Business School grad who also went through a first-year breakup. “You’re making such a huge investment in your B-school network. 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 Columbia’s Matt, who quickly regained his amorous footing. “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’s Tracy. And you’ll 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 those 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 one graduate from the Thunderbird School who attended his fair share of parties while studying for his MBA. Liz, a graduate of HBS, 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,” she says. Finally he succeeded—and the couple were married by graduation. Most events are designed ultimately to 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. “The numbers game is horrible for us,” explains a second-year at Wharton who writes an advice column for the campus newspaper. “A lot of guys go outside the B-school community for dates. Nursing students are popular.”

For women, the attention can be flattering, but B-school isn’t necessarily a feast of eligible men. Kim, an HBS alumni, met her husband at Harvard, but some of her friends weren’t so lucky. “They thought, ‘This is going to be fun. Think of all those cute, smart guys!’” she says. “They were kind of underwhelmed.” Her explanation: “The average 27-yearold woman is ready for marriage. The average 27-year-old man is not.”

4. In the dating world at large, an MBA helps a man—but not a woman.  When men announce they’re getting an MBA, prospective dates tend to respond. “Those three letters go a long way,” says a Georgetown second-year. “The salary is probably a motivator. If I were in the Peace Corps, I’d probably still be able to meet women, but most seem more eager after hearing about the MBA.”

Unfortunately, female B-schoolers often find that men are intimidated by their education—and the ambition it connotes. In fact, the mention of B-school can bring the flirting to a grinding halt. “When I was a first-year at HBS, I came home at Christmas and met someone at a bar,” says Liz from Harvard. “When I told him I went to business school, he basically walked away.” Kim says that she and her female HBS classmates called this problem “dropping the H-bomb.” “When a guy walks in and says, ‘I go to Harvard Business School,’ it’s huge,” she says. “But as a woman, it’s a total turnoff.”

5. Everything—including romance—moves much faster in B-school time. If you do decide to start seeing someone, keep in mind that at B-school, romance metabolizes 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. “When you’re working, you see more of your boss than your girlfriend, but school is kind of an incubator for love and dating,” says an HBS graduate. “Even though I’ve only been dating my girlfriend for a year, it feels like four years. It’s like dog years.”

Julie from Georgetown agrees. “School is incredibly fast-paced, which spills into your social life. Two months after I started dating my boyfriend, we celebrated Easter with my parents. My ex-boyfriend would never have wanted to meet 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, stress, bonding—and celebratory evenings. Chances are, if lightning strikes, you’ll give in. “I had heard that dating your sectionmate was taboo,” says Liz from Harvard, whose future husband was in her section. “If it goes wrong, you still have to deal with him 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.

If the relationship ends, it’s not just the two people involved who get hurt. Everyone who has to deal with an imploding romance will suffer as well. “Dating in school takes a certain conviction,” says Allison, a graduate of Columbia Business School who met her boyfriend in her sections. “I have to say, without great maturity, it’s 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, who earned his MBA at Columbia. 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 them 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.”

Kerry, a UCLA Anderson graduate, says it’s typical to find everyone’s nose in your business. “The gossip mill can ruin something before even a casual relationship begins,” she says. “You need to keep it under wraps until you’re officially a couple.” Unfortunately, even if you try very hard to keep your trysts a secret, you will likely fail. You eat lunch with someone just a couple of times—and the buzz starts.

8. No matter what you think, no matter what people tell you, this is solemn business. When it comes to social life, B-school students may think they’re back in college or even high school. But don’t be fooled: The stakes are a lot higher.

Things have changed since a generation or two ago, when a student’s undergraduate years were prime time for choosing a mate. Many a female college student 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 single late-twenty-somethings. The majority of people entering MBA programs are sneaking up on 30. They’ve made some money and had a few significant others. They treat love—like everything else—as an intense, goal-oriented pursuit. Meanwhile, 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 of HBS. “A lot of people start that off by getting married.” He 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.”

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MBA Jungle, August 2008