Life

Here's How College Is Still Messing With Your Dating Life

by Sarah Fielding
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While you might list your type as someone who's tall, likes to read, and can make you laugh, you may not have realized another factor has been on your mind when scrolling through your dating apps: Where they went to school. While this may sound surprising, it actually makes a lot of sense. You spent four years, give or take, of your life at this place, it's bound to have shaped you in more ways than you realize. And dating app Hinge discovered that the college you went to still plays a big hand in how you date.

To ring in the new school year, Hinge decided to find out how a user's school, affects their dating experiences. The app's data scientists recently analyzed the behavior of approximately 200,000 of its members to determine the results. It's easy to think that college's effects on your dating life ended once you have the diploma in hand. But college doesn't stop messing with your dating life just because it's over. Where you went to school can actually have a lasting impact on who you date, as well as who you interact with on dating apps.

Here's what they found out about how the college you went to affects your dating app experiences.

1

Rival Schools Don't Like To Date Each Other

Apparently rivalries last long after college is over as the results revealed that users are much less inclined to like a profile of someone who went to their college's rival. Examples of this include Harvard and it's rival Boston University and University of Southern California and it's rival Stanford.

2

Listing Your Education Leads To Better Results

Here's another reason why filling out your dating profile as thoroughly as possible is so important. Hinge found that when users listed their education it made then 16 percent more likely to receive a like than users who left it blank. On top of that, those users were 10 percent more likely to have a connection.

3

People Want To Date Someone Who Went To Their School

Loyalty runs strong, with the results indicating that, on average, users were two times as likely to date someone who went to the same school as them. I guess dating someone who went to the same college as you would build a foundation of sorts because the two of you have shared common experiences and lived in the same place.

4

Men From Liberal Arts Colleges Are The Most Desirable

It doesn't surprise me to hear that men who went to liberal art colleges typically receive the most likes as, in my opinion, this adds a layer of sensitivity to them. Hinge broke it down even further discovering which schools had the best response. The top five were Colby College, Colgate University, Middlebury College, College of Charleston, and Washington and Less University.

5

Women From Southern Schools Get The Most Likes

While men from liberal arts, northern colleges were most successful, the opposite was true for women. Hinge discovered that women who had attended colleges in the south were frequently receiving the most likes. Again the results were broken down to show the top five colleges with University of South Carolina, NC State University, University of Miami, Southern Methodist University, and University of Tampa alumni being the most popular on the app.

How you date is up to you, ultimately. But next time you're on a dating app, see if it's been factoring in your choices. Or, if you're feeling daring, like a rival.