Out of your league? You’ve still got a 1 in 5 chance of romance

FOR those singles with their sights set on the most gorgeous member of the opposite sex, some good news – it has been proved dating out of your league is not just a daydream.

A study of online dating has found most people aim high, picking a partner roughly 25 per cent more desirable than themselves.

But, as unrealistic as that may seem, 21 per cent of people who did this received a reply that could lead to a relationship – a success rate of about one in five.

Messages taken from dating websites in four major US cities in January 2014 were analysed by the University of Michigan. Researchers, led by sociologist Dr Elizabeth Bruch, concluded: ‘Our results suggest that, contrary to popular belief, attracting the attention of someone out of one’s league is entirely possible.

‘The chances of receiving a reply from a highly desirable partner may be low, but they remain well above zero, although one will have to work harder and perhaps also wait longer to make progress.’

To identify the most desirable in the dating pool, researchers worked out who received the most messages. The most popular was a 30-year-old woman in New York, who got 1,504 in a month.

Women messaged men 23 per cent more desirable than themselves. Men picked women 26 per cent more desirable, despite being more than twice as likely to get a reply from a less desirable woman.

Dating websites say more than half of couples will meet online by 2031, with services such as Tinder and Match.com having become increasingly popular in Britain. However, online daters should not aim too high, as hardly anyone in the study contacted people far beneath them in desirability.

But Dr Bruch said: ‘Our scores reflect the overall desirability rankings … and there may be submarkets in which people who would not necessarily score as high by our measures could still have an awesome and fulfilling dating life.’ The journal Science Advances published the study.