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{shortcode-9fd4fcc6a35c19e26f9d149025f9445bc84c7659}arlos A. Garcia ’28 first approached his now-girlfriend Athena M. Severance ’28 during CS50: “An Introduction to Computer Science” office hours in Widener Library, where she was sitting with a mutual friend of theirs.

“And then we kept working together because of the class,” Severance said. Their similar academic interests and friends made it easy for them to start dating. But Garcia said that their relationship is “a rare case,” as many of their peers choose to put their grades above all else.

Severance said that the pair does not overemphasize getting straight A’s, giving them leeway to “lose” time to socializing and dating.

“It’s not the end-all be-all if we don’t get an A, which is why it was fine for us to be more social and lose some time to that,” she said.

As Harvard students work through their endless to-do lists of essays and p-sets, many procrastinate one particular item: finding their perfect match. Some students joke that this task comes with higher stakes — marrying a Harvard classmate might even mean better admissions odds for your future children.

“I was just talking to a friend, and she was like, ‘Oh, I’m trying to find my double legacy by senior year,’” Crystal X. Manyloun ’26 said. “And we’re like, ‘Okay, I’ll keep an eye out for you.’”

But ambitious academic and professional goals routinely get in the way of Harvard students’ romantic and social lives — leaving them without certain aspects of the traditional college experience. Undergraduates commonly lament a dearth of parties and stifled school spirit at the College.

In interviews, students said this problem also bleeds into the Harvard dating scene — which many said seems abnormally stale. Undergraduates used a slew of adjectives to describe dating at Harvard, with some dubbing it “abysmal,” “weaker,” “tough,” or “nonexistent.”

Students’ estimates of the portion of their peers in committed relationships varied from as low as five percent to as high as 60 percent — with a majority of students’ approximations leaning toward the lower bound.

Colleen B. Meosky ’28 said Harvard dating pales in comparison to other universities or media depictions of college.

“It’s not like most colleges, or at least how other colleges are depicted in movies,” she said. “This place is devoid of a lot of relationships.”

Students pointed to a unique set of cultural norms that pose obstacles for a flourishing dating scene: demanding academics, fears about developing an unwanted reputation, and a lack of casual romantic settings. The Crimson spoke with more than 75 undergraduates and relationship experts about why Harvard students are too tied up to tie the knot.

Over-Committed or Fear of Commitment?

With Harvard students’ Google Calendars already crammed with office hours, coffee chats, and board meetings, there is little time remaining for students to schedule dates.

According to The Crimson’s incoming freshman survey, 81 percent of the Class of 2028 anticipated academics being the most important use of their time. As of May 18, The Crimson’s senior survey revealed that the Class of 2025 spent, on average, nearly 48 hours per week on academics and extracurricular activities.

Students said that this focus on academics, extracurriculars, and career prospects detracts time from romantic pursuits.

“I would say probably more people are single here than other schools, just because I feel like people are spending more time just doing a bunch of different things,” Watson C. Meyer ’28 said. “Class, career, clubs.”

“I feel like Harvard is known for its academics, and it’s not too much about being romantic and dating,” Anna Umeda ’27 said.

This burden was especially difficult to overcome during stressful periods, like while applying for highly competitive finance and consulting jobs, students said.

“I know relationships that fall apart when it comes to recruiting season,” Manyloun said. “One person might be a little bit more grinding — as one might say — while another would be like, ‘Oh, why aren’t you hanging out with me?’”

Several students said that Harvard’s rumor mill deters dating and hook-ups, as students protect their pristine reputations and avoid harsh criticism from their peers.

“People at Harvard love to judge,” Carter J. Crowley ’27 said. “It can be sometimes hard to justify getting with someone or taking them to a date event out of fear that people are just gonna be yapping about it afterwards.”

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But Harvard’s intense environment also supplies opportunities for finding a romantic partner in class discussion sections and club meetings.

“I feel like the dating scene is very tied into the academic scene,” Severance said.

Manyloun said that many of her peers meet from “class and clubs — two C’s.”

“I feel like in class, you do your p-sets together and it really establishes like, ‘Okay, I can trust you,’” she added.

Without a college bar in Harvard Square or traditional fraternities and Greek life on campus, student organization events also serve as a chance for students to meet their other half.

Alma C. Russell ’25-26 said that parties thrown by The Harvard Lampoon — a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine — offered students a new chance to connect with their peers. Non-members can only attend Lampoon parties starting at the end of their junior year, making the party attendees predominantly seniors.

“I feel like the Lampoon was such a great addition,” said Russell, who met her boyfriend at a Lampoon party. “I think that really fostered a lot of relationships because it put our entire class together.”

‘She Goes to a Different School’

When freshmen first move into the Yard, many of them bring more than just suitcases, towing long-distance relationships from across the country. Even after many of these relationships end, students agreed that Harvard’s dating scene is vastly different for freshmen.

“I feel like more freshmen date freshmen, and then once you’re a sophomore, it’s not as rigid,” Nayan I. Das ’28 said, adding that once sorted into Houses, the difference in grades is “less the barrier.”

Access to final club parties — typically granted to students during their sophomore spring semester — may also contribute to the divide.

“We go out at the clubs a lot and there’s no freshmen. You’re not really gonna be interacting with them,” Sabre M.B. Zimmer ’25 said. “Maybe that’s different at other schools because at frats and sororities, there are freshmen there.”

Many students said the large number of remaining relationships from high school is another distinguishing factor for dating culture among freshmen.

“Freshman year, I made a lot of friends who also had boyfriends from their hometowns,” Emily A. Figueiredo ’25, who is dating someone from her hometown, said. “It’s funny because every passing year, there were less and less people who were still in that situation.”

Difficulty maintaining these long-distance relationships might be a typical collegiate struggle, students said. But Chloe M. Harmon ’28 said that Harvard’s national and global appeal may also contribute to the strain — with the Class of 2028 hailing from all 50 states and 94 countries, putting a sizeable distance between them and their hometown significant others.

Harmon said that more of her friends attending state schools “are still in those relationships, versus people that come here.”

Though freshmen are most likely to be in a long-distance relationship, students said it was common for any Harvard undergraduate to date students at one of the 64 Boston-area colleges and universities — like Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or Wellesley College.

“Because we live in Boston, there’s so many other schools, there’s so many other options,” Nate J. Tanen ’28 said.

Discussing the prospect of entering into a relationship with a student at another school, several students constructed a cost-benefit analysis.

“It’s a trade-off. The difficulty is they’re further away. You have to travel,” Tanen said, who is dating a Wellesley student. “The benefit is, if anything goes south, you’ll see them much less than another Harvard student.”

Though the primary con is the distance from other schools, with one student calling the process of commuting a “time sink,” some said the separation could also be an advantage — a way to avoid awkward post-breakup interactions, and a reprieve from “the Harvard bubble.”

“It’s like an escape, like I can leave the Harvard bubble whenever I want,” Figueiredo said.

Several students at schools like MIT, Northeastern University, and Yale University said they do not associate Harvard with a robust dating scene.

Olivia Velten-Lomelin, a rising senior at MIT, said she believed that students do not socialize outside of Harvard, keeping to themselves instead.

“In our experience, Harvard kids kind of stay to themselves. I don’t know of a lot of people at MIT who are dating Harvard students,” Velten-Lomelin said. “I know some people who have hooked up with Harvard students. But dating, I don’t know a single relationship.”​

But some said they didn’t expect the dating scene to be different at Harvard compared to other colleges.

“I imagine it’s probably the same as every other school. I don’t think it’s different,” Myles K. Oakley, a rising senior at North Carolina State University, said.

‘You Don’t Have to Date’

When asked about the stakes of Harvard’s limited dating scene, psychology professors and relationship experts said college dating — while not absolutely essential — can offer many social-emotional benefits from interpersonal reflection and social interaction.

Jennifer R. Gatchel ’99 — a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School — said the more social exposure one gets, the more adept they become at building meaningful connections.

Gatchel said that putting off the pursuit of a relationship completely could even be “a potentially harmful thing for your own development as a person.”

“There’s a learning curve to all of our degrees of social intelligence, emotional intelligence, intelligence, and wisdom,” she added. “That really can only be gained through experiential learning.”

Paul W. Eastwick — a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis — said the experience one gains while being in a relationship provides an opportunity for self-knowledge.

“Dating is valuable for people, not just because it’s a nice experience in and of itself, but you will gain self-insight along the way,” Eastwick said.

Academic pressure “seems to be escalating in highly-selective colleges,” Richard J. Weissbourd — a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education — said. “Research shows that anxiety and depression are significantly correlated with high achievement pressure.”

But Weissbourd added that academic pressure is just one piece of the transformed dating puzzle, among an overall national decline in college dating.

“I think it’s complicated,” he said. “My understanding of the data is there is less, with less dating and sexual activity across a range of economic classes and colleges with varying selectivity.”

Patrick “Quinn” White, an assistant philosophy professor at Harvard, was skeptical of academic rigor being a major influence on the declining dating scene, pointing to the rise in hookup culture instead. Since the 1990s, hookup culture has begun to crowd out more serious dating, according to Tulane University associate sociology professor Lisa D. Wade.

“What would it be about academic rigor that is, in itself, an obstacle to romance?” White said. “Instead, I think it’s going to be much more the way in which academically rigorous institutions, as a culturally contingent matter, pick up on other cultural trends.”

But some academics asserted that students don’t need to engage in romantic relationships in order to reap the benefits of social interaction.

Robert J. Waldinger ’73 — director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development — said it is not necessary for people to find romantic relationships in order to be happy. Waldinger oversees the longest-running longitudinal study on happiness, which began in 1938.

“You don’t have to date. You can have really good friends and be really happy,” Waldinger said. “You don’t have to have a romantic partner to be happy. That’s definitely one of the things we know from our research.”

Wade said there is value in gaining experience through interpersonal relationships, whether they are romantic or platonic.

“Meaningful, deep friendships with a lot of mutual support could be just as formative when it comes to developing the skills to be in a relationship,” Wade said.

Eastwick said that he has “never seen much evidence that it matters” when individuals begin dating.

“People who start dating early are just as likely to have a happy relationship when they’re in their 30s and beyond, as somebody who started dating in their 20s,” he said.

“Ultimately, whenever somebody decides to do that, or if they want to take four years off to study really hard — all of it is fine,” Eastwick added.

—Staff writer Shawn A. Boehmer can be reached at shawn.boehmer@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @ShawnBoehmer.

—Staff writer Chantel A. De Jesus can be reached at chantel.dejesus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @c_a_dejesus.

—Staff writer Darcy G Lin can be reached at darcy.lin@thecrimson.com.