love & romance

Sorry, you’ll have to pay full price to date Ivy Leaguers

People you might meet at an IvyDate party, from their Facebook page.

When your gene pool says Winklevoss but your wallet says feed me, how can you stay afloat in your social milieu? You’ll have to teach tennis this summer or start breeding Irish Setters because there are no more discounts available to join IvyDate, a matchmaking service founded by two Harvard B-school alums. DailyCandy has been offering $500 annual IvyDate memberships for 60 percent off, but the deal has apparently sold out. So what is this IvyDate anyway?

It’s a matchmaking service that connects those with “intellectual curiosity, love of learning, drive and determination,” which the word “Ivy” is apparently shorthand for. Anyone can apply, but IvyDate reviews all prospective members “to ensure they demonstrate the very best qualities.”

“We’re giv­ing Ivy League peo­ple a chance to be con­tacted by those who value the qual­i­ties that they have,” Treibel said in an interview. “The qual­i­ties that we pro­mote are by no means ex­clu­sive to the thir­teen schools, but the ed­u­ca­tion and pro­fes­sional achieve­ment of those sin­gles pro­vide vi­able in­di­ca­tions that they have those qual­i­ties.” [What are the other five Ivies? Are Brooklyn and Kingsborough in them?]

You might think that Brokelyn would crap on the whole enterprise of IvyDate, but that would be predictable and obvious. Someone has to buy Brooklyn Heights townhouses, and it might as well be these guys:

IvyDate founders Meri Beric and Phillip Triebel. Photo courtesy of French Tuesdays.

But we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that the IvyDate founders also started DateHarvardSq.com, an oft-skewered matchmaking service where women pay to meet Harvard men. And possibly to wonder whether dudes who join such a site would make the best boyfriends / husbands.

And maybe we’ll also note that people who are so status-obsessed might not be the most fun dates, unless there’s a private yacht involved. (Though to be fair, status obsession in Brooklyn takes many forms no less grating than the Princeton dining club kind.)

And possibly to wonder whether anyone who’s truly exceptional needs to pay a matchmaker to find similarly stationed singles. Don’t these people already swim in the same rooftop pool? And haven’t they heard of something called an alumni association? Like, if there were a Bushwick hipster dating service, would anyone on it actually be a Bushwick hipster?

And to wonder if these people are such desirable commodities, why are they being offered at 60 percent off on DailyCandy? How is that exclusive?

No, we’re not going to dump on IvyDate, if that’s really your cup of English Breakfast. But one thing we will never ever do is endorse paying full retail for anything, including a $500-a-year IvyDate VIP membership.

Until there’s another deal on MOTUs, you’re going to have to find yours on the cheap. Why not go on How About We and post things that stuckup people like to do? I’m spitballing here, but say, how about we… visit your parents in Greenwich? How about we… count the threads in your Turkish cotton sheets? (Sexy, right?) How about we get shitfaced on Makers Mark and you get a tattoo of your family crest? How about I fall asleep while you tell me stories about boarding school? Be creative!

Alternately, if there are any Ivy Leaguers out there who would like to meet Brokelyn readers, please make yourself known in the comments. BrokeDate is free until we get venture capital.

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6 Comments

  1. eric_silver

    I assume they mean the sister schools, like Barnard and Radcliffe, but I don’t know what the other 3 are, since the sister schools are traditionally 7 in number. Maybe the founders weren’t math majors?

    • Henrietta Jones (@cameralady)

      Radcliffe actually ceased being a separate entitly a few years ago; it is now under the Harvard umbrella (unlike Barnard which is still technically separate from Columbia).

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