College students are flocking to the Marriage Pact for fun and love
NEW YORK >> It’s the stuff of movies: Two friends vow to marry each other if they’re not hitched by a specified future date or age.
Well, the Marriage Pact, an annual matching ritual that has become popular on nearly 90 college campuses around the U.S., has turned that dusty cliche into fun.
And a few couples have found lasting love.
Nearly half a million students have participated since the pact first rolled out at Stanford University in 2017.
Born of an economics project by two students there, the pact involves an algorithm that rates matches based on such statements as “I prefer politically incorrect humor” and “I pride myself on telling hard truths.”
Unlike dating apps and services, each student gets just one name, a percentage on the quality of the match and an email address to reach out.
“The idea is, if you think about everybody who goes to your college, surely there’s someone who is a good backup plan for you,” said Liam McGregor, one of the students who came up with the pact. “Not a Prince Charming, you know, not your perfect person necessarily, but maybe somebody whose number you should have.”
The questions, he said, “are selected based on, hey, what do we need to know to have a 50-year relationship with someone? Can we make it a great one?”
Many students do it with friends just for fun and don’t follow up. Others are ghosted after trying to make contact. A tiny fraction land in long-term relationships, even marriage.
Count Max Walker and Melia Summers in that last group. The two were New York University students when they did the pact in fall 2020. It was just a lark for both. He was in New York and she was at NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus. They chatted online for months, then Summers took a semester to study in New York.
Their first physical date, for pizza, was nearly a year after their match. Wedding bells will ring June 29. The quality of the match, according to the algorithm, was 99.65%
Take that, Tinder.
“We liked the same music. We did the same sports. We’re both from rural places,” Summers said. “It was kind of funny, right? It’s someone saying that they can find your, like, ultimate match. I didn’t really know if I was ready for my ultimate match at the time but I thought that was kind of a funny promise. And also, my friends were doing it, and we thought it’d be kind of interesting to do it together.”
The two plan to move to Knoxville, Tennessee, after the wedding so Walker can attend law school there.