@kimberlymacg, likely true. However, for better or worse, I found that at a certain age (mid-to-late 20s in grad school and my first job as a business school professor), I hit an age where a number of the women I met had the equivalent of a checklist (nice guy, not terrible looking, athletic, Ivy pedigree, likely attractive career trajectory , and for some Jewish) made me instantly attractive (whereas in college before similar women have found the niceness, the heavy academic pedigree in a STEM field, etc. to be much less attractive). This didn’t alter the pool – whoever I was meeting in grad school and on the job – but the pedigree may have altered my perceived attractiveness.
I also think that going to at least some of these schools makes one more likely to swim in a pool of similar people post-school. I worked for one year in NY and used the alumni club as a way to meet people when I was finding it difficult otherwise. I live in New England, where people are highly attuned to where one went to school (recall Harvard Tourette’s) but we are in a pool that is highly enriched in terms of HYP, Penn, MIT, Cornell, but also Wellesley (married folks from MIT or H) etc. Most artist friends went to non-Ivy institutions (other than Yale and maybe Columbia, the best art schools are not Ivies),
If I’m right, @kimberlymacg, there is a still a delayed effect of the pedigree. But, then again, maybe my sample of boomers be dated – if a plurality of people are finding mates online, maybe that diminishes the likelihood of any Ivy ocuplings…