He’s driven, well connected, likely to be the next CEO of Goldman Sachs, founder of Facebook or future president of the US. And thanks to hit shows such as Gossip Girl, The OC, Dawson’s Creek and even Twilight, he’s the American man many ambitious young British women now want to date.
The lure of meeting a dashing, ?ber- intelligent Ivy League educated male like Barack Obama, Jake Gyllenhaal or GG’s aspiring Dartford College student Dan Humphrey — along with financial incentives and the promise of an elite education — is encouraging an increasing number of female school-leavers to shun Oxbridge and apply to America’s top universities.
Certainly, Harry Potter actress Emma Watson, who chose to enrol at Brown University in Rhode Island this autumn over Cambridge, looked happier deep in conversation with a fellow student and Spanish rock star Rafael Cebri?n at a recent New York City ice hockey game last week than she did sunbathing in the Caribbean with her British financier boyfriend Jay Barrymore a few days later. She looked equally glum when he came to visit her at university in September.
Yale, which boasts male alumni including the actor Ed Norton, Californication star David Duchovny and Sex and the City’s “Mr Big” Chris Noth, has reported a 20 per cent increase in applications from British students in 2009. The UK’s top academic girls’ school, St Paul’s Girls’ School, sent 12 pupils stateside this year, almost twice the total two years ago, and at Cheltenham Ladies’ College 19 pupils applied to US universities for the 2010 intake, up from 12 applicants last year.
The academic allure to young, high-flying women is clear: the Ivy League’s institutions of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania have emerged as leaders in the new world rankings. Harvard, Yale and Princeton are first, third and eighth best universities in the world. While Cambridge is still second, Oxford has slipped to fifth.
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And while in the UK students must shoulder the burden of up to £3,225 yearly top-up fees, the brightest British students can apply to the top three Ivies, Harvard, Yale and Princeton, regardless of their ability to pay. The system gives disadvantaged applicants a chance to qualify for scholarships and aid that covers full tuition and board worth £30,000. English universities are taking notice: The Higher Education Policy Institute released a report last week suggesting Oxbridge emulates the Ivies by recruiting students from poorer backgrounds.
Of course it’s the promise of a more sophisticated and all-encompassing social life that is proving hardest to resist. April Chye, 17 — a Cheltenham Ladies’ College sixth former hoping to make it into the University of Pennsylvania — is drawn by the diverse range of clubs, organisations and extracurricular activities. Her school friend Nam Phatraprasit, 18, who is applying to Yale and University of Pennsylvania, agrees, “I feel the social life is more vibrant. There are lots of opportunities, events and different societies.”
Sarah Perlman, 24, admits that when she went to Brown in 2004, “I wasn’t into English guys.” She fell for her Midwestern boyfriend when he wooed her in true American fashion by inviting her over for apple pie.
But as the young women studying stateside prepare to come home for Christmas, have those real-life Nate Archibalds (Gossip Girl) and even Edward Cullens (the Twilight vampire who went to Harvard) measured up to their dreamy image? According to the Ivy League admissions teams the men they admit are not mere loveable geeks, preppy poseurs and library- fanatics, they must be confident, successful, driven and outgoing. The colleges have even devised their own personality classification system to help them hand pick specific character types. “The Ivy League is very good at getting objective measurements of the characters they’re interested in,” says Joseph Soares, Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University, North Carolina, and author of book about Ivy League admissions, The Power of Privilege. “They found seven types of successful students: artists, athletes, careerists, grinds, leaders, scholars and socialisers.”
Ben Bernanke, a Princeton alumnus and current Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, for example, is a “leader” and “scholar”, Harvard dropout and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is a “careerist” and the Away We Go actor and Brown grad John Krasinski is an “artist” — as, presumably, is musician Rafael Cebrian.
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“The kids who are selected have invariably been superstars in their high schools,” observes Dr Dona Matthews, the former director of Hunter College Centre for Gifted Studies and Education, New York. “In order to get in to any of the Ivies — in addition to exceptionally high academics and SATs — they have to be athletic and they need to demonstrate exceptional social abilities.”
There is of course one trait that all Ivy League men have in common: their incredible drive. “The one thing that everyone shares,” says one Princeton graduate, Adam Peterson, 27, “is profound ambition.”
And while ambition might seem highly appealing in a potential boyfriend, there is a flipside. Ann Mullen, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto — who compares 50 Yale students with 50 undergrads at the Southern Connecticut State University in her forthcoming book Degrees of Inequality — was struck by the scale of the sense of entitlement she encountered in her study sample of men attending Ivy League colleges.
Many of her Yale interviewees felt that attending the third best university in the world imbued them with the instant confidence to aim for the most elevated positions available. It gave others a licence to indulge in sheer arrogance and snobbery.
When working for a magazine in New York I experienced something of those characteristics during a dinner with Mark, a Harvard-educated American who scanned the room over my shoulder while I talked. He was a self-confessed type-A personality (a high-achieving, time-conscious, highly competitive workaholic) who mused that extracurricular activities and late night studying had stunted his growth. He admitted that he saw multiple women and the date ended at 10.45pm, half an hour after he suggested it should.
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Another over-scheduled Yale man I know sandwiched brunch between a five-mile run, an academic discussion group and six hours in the office — on a Sunday.
Adam Peterson acknowledges that this propensity for superiority is a downfall of his fellow Ivies, “the greatest thing they need to battle is losing the common touch. When you go to a dinner party and someone tells you how they speak Russian, Arabic and spend their time in Timbuktu, it will probably be an Ivy Leaguer. And it’s not inter-personally attractive.”
However Lucy, one English Yale second-year, in a long-term relationship with her university boyfriend, is an ardent advocate for her Ivy brethren who she says, “exude confidence”. She admits that some boys can be arrogant, and their drive often leads to a “lack of romance”.
“I’ve heard, ‘I don’t have time for a relationship’ so many times but it’s just a excuse. I’ve been dumped by athletes who prefer to commit to their sport than a relationship,” she says. But those same qualities have raised the bar for future mates: “It’s exciting to be with people who are really motivated, whether they’re proving their masculinity or their intellect,” she says. “We’re powerful women at these schools, it’s nice to be with powerful men.”
While the academic pressure is intense, dating at Ivy institutions is more casual than at English universities. “It’s pretty rare to go on a date now,” says Sally, 20, a UK-born Tufts undergrad, studying at the Boston-based university that shares classes with Harvard. “It’s a ‘hook-up culture’ where romantic interaction doesn’t necessarily lead to anything more.”
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Lucy, 21, agrees. Unlike English institutions where women connect with men in alcohol-fuelled environments such as the local club or the student union bar, Ivy girls meet boys by joining societies, sports teams and academic clubs. The sexual pressure is off and they can assess potential partners outside the confines of the bar.
And — as Emma Watson ma- now be discovering — British Ivy Leaguers soon develop high standards for the men in their lives. “Very few of my English guy friends are as driven by success and goal-orientated as the guys here,” Lucy says. “A shockingly large number of them have graduated and aren’t doing anything.” While Sally adds: “When I come home I cringe at English boys. I forget how cynical the English sense of humour is.”
Does this mean that the cards are stacked against Watson’s boyfriend of 18 months, 26-year-old Barrymore? Not necessarily, says an Harvard grad, Corey Burnett, 33. “Ivy League men are highly intellectual, but unfortunately along with that comes a deficit in emotional intelligence. They’re more apt to quote Proust and less likely to discuss their feelings.”
Dr Matthews observes: “For kids to meet all of the criteria to get into an Ivy League college, it’s possible they haven’t had the time or ability to emphasise their emotional intelligence: qualities of empathy, kindness, insight and intuition.”
Sarah Perlman has seen nerds transform after graduation into restless womanisers, searching for their perfect mate and taking full advantage of America’s formalised dating system to do so. “They are taught that the sky is the limit and that comes to the women they expect to date, too,” she says.
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One female Harvadian summed it up when she told me: “The thing about Harvard guys is that when they graduate they realise that they can attract anyone because they went to Harvard. They get it right on their third marriage.”