It’s only an opinion but I think it’s best to match up closely in terms of intelligence.
There are so many good responses on this thread, it's hard to pick one in which to respond.
Yours is one of the good ones. You have to have similar intellects. I dated more than a few guys after my divorce, was divorced a long time but a couple things that were very important, they had to be conservative, I did not want to spend my life arguing with an idiot and they had to be intelligent (but not TOO intelligent) - you know, about my level. Dumb guys I dumped really quickly, only met one or two overly smart guys and I just couldn't converse, for some reason they were creepy to me.