Courtesy Of Ivydate.Com

Dart­mouth stu­dents in­ter­ested in find­ing a per­fect ro­man­tic match with an im­pec­ca­ble re­sume just got an­other op­tion for on­line date net­work­ing — Har­vard-alum brain­child Ivy­Date re­cently joined the ranks of uni­ver­sity-based dat­ing sites like Col­le­giateS­park.

The new on­line dat­ing ser­vice of­fers in­di­vid­u­als both in­side and out­side of pres­ti­gious aca­d­e­mic in­sti­tu­tions the chance to meet other sin­gles of such cal­iber, ac­cord­ing to Beri Meric, a founder and CEO of Ivy­Date.

Ivy­Date was founded in Feb­ru­ary by Meric and Philipp Treibel, both alumni of Har­vard Busi­ness School, who hope to “re­con­nect like-minded in­di­vid­u­als,” ac­cord­ing to Treibel. Treibel es­ti­mated that since its launch, Ivy­Date has gar­nered sev­eral thou­sand mem­bers who rep­re­sent a range of sin­gles from across the globe. How­ever, the high con­cen­tra­tion of grad­u­ates re­mains in New York, Boston and Los An­ge­les, Karim said.

“We de­vel­oped this on­line dat­ing plat­form to con­nect men and women with tal­ent and de­ter­mi­na­tion who might not want to sac­ri­fice the time for ca­reers on more cum­ber­some dat­ing sites,” Meric said.

In ad­di­tion to the eight Ivy League uni­ver­si­ties, five other com­pa­ra­ble schools — Mass­a­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy, Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity and the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics — are part of the site’s mem­ber­ship base. These schools were cho­sen for their “renowned world recog­ni­tion,” Meric said.

Al­though grad­u­ates of these schools ex­em­plify the qual­i­ties of drive, love of learn­ing and tal­ent that Ivy­Date pur­ports to pro­mote, in­di­vid­u­als who did not at­tend these schools but who also value those qual­i­ties are wel­come to apply for mem­ber­ship, ac­cord­ing to Meric.

With Ivy­Date’s match­ing al­go­rithm, grad­u­ates of these uni­ver­si­ties re­ceive a rec­om­mended mix of in­ter­ested sin­gles from both in­side and out­side the el­i­gi­ble schools’ grad­u­a­tion pool, while non-grad­u­ates of the uni­ver­si­ties are matched with only grad­u­ates of those schools.

“We’re giv­ing Ivy League peo­ple a chance to be con­tacted by those who value the qual­i­ties that they have,” Treibel said. “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.”

Grad­u­ates of the uni­ver­si­ties may ex­em­plify the ideal of “ivy cal­iber” but are by no means alone in their achieve­ments, the founders said.

“We don’t want to ex­clude, and we are very much open to any­body who shows those qual­i­ties,” Alykhan Karim, di­rec­tor of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, said.

Prospec­tive mem­bers can sign up and re­ceive matches for free, but must pay for a sub­scrip­tion if they want to con­tact matches, ac­cord­ing to Meric. Sub­scrip­tions will range from $20 to $50 a month, but the prices may be low­ered for cur­rent stu­dents.

“Ivy­Date is a very mean­ing­ful busi­ness that al­lows us to con­nect peo­ple, es­pe­cially when find­ing love is not an easy thing when you’re busy with stud­ies and ca­reers,” Meric said. “This is a ser­vice that makes it eas­ier for in­cred­i­ble peo­ple to con­nect with each other, and we hope to ex­pand on that in the fu­ture.”