Marriage Pact
Annual matching event
100+ colleges, 750,000+ participants
With the team at Marriage Pact
Have you ever heard of the idea of a marriage pact? It’s where you sit down with someone, perhaps your best friend in high school, and say, “Look... if we’re both still single by the time we’re 30... maybe we make a pact to just marry each other?”
These days, at top colleges across the country, a questionnaire goes out across campus for one week of the year. Half the school signs up. Then, on a Monday night at 10pm, you’ll be huddled in your dorm room with your friends, waiting for an email. Slowly but surely, you’ll start hearing screaming through your cinderblock walls, up and down your dorm, and you know: the matches are coming out. One by one, your friends start screaming, too—“who did you get?” you’ll say, “who did you get? who did you get!”
The Marriage Pact uses an algorithm to pair each student with their optimal marital backup plan, out of everyone on campus. One person, one name, no photos, no swiping. 29% of matches meet up in person (vs 1–2% industry standard). And if you meet up, there’s a 1 in 9 chance you’ll still be together a year later.
It began as a class project in 2017, as part of a Stanford market design class. It has now launched at 112 colleges, and signed up 3/4 of a million people. Over time, it has steadily become the largest college tradition that’s not football. At 25 colleges, students are more likely to do the Marriage Pact, during their four years there, than they are to graduate.
One of the things that makes the Marriage Pact special is an air of mystique. It is not a centralized thing that's just being pushed on us. It's something that we take on as students.
"I was like, 'There's literally no way,'" Russell said. She opened the email in Sawyer alongside many of her friends, who looked at their matches together. "Everyone was talking about it," she added. "It was like Christmas morning."
I’ve never seen something that’s not football impact this school in this way.
Of course, we can't discount the most obvious answer — it's fun. The questionnaire is low risk and high reward. At worst, you get a good laugh with your friends. But at best, you might meet your match made in heaven (or in this case, Palo Alto, Calif.).
My match and I were last semester's eighth best match on campus. Obviously, I thought we were soulmates. … He found out I liked to write and immediately encouraged me to join the Cynic. … Instead of falling head over heels in love with my marriage pact match, I fell for writing and for myself.
As a gay youth in Texas and North Carolina, dating apps have been the primary way I've met potential suitors. … The Marriage Pact presents a refreshing departure from superficial formats of other apps, blindly pairing us with our personality compatible soulmate.
Like doing the polar plunge or going on First-Year Trips … you participate because you like traditions, and there are lots of traditions on this campus.
That's why I was surprised to learn more about myself and what I was open to in relationships through the survey. … As I answered these prompts, I slowly started to paint a picture of my current self mirrored onto a potential partner.
It felt like Marriage Pact would be a good way to meet new people in a low stress way. … I want people to understand that there's no expectations for your Marriage Pact. It's just about having fun.
Honestly, it felt like a community thing. Everyone was doing it.
We did it for fun, and if something came out of it—great. But it wasn't the reason we filled it out. I also think a lot of people filled it out—and that's kind of the point of the Marriage Pact—is people fill it out because other people are filling it out. It's supposed to be this campus experience.
I met him at orientation, and when I got my BC Marriage Pact match, I didn't think anything would come of it. But he reached out to me, and actually, I guess the algorithm is pretty good. … We were very compatible and ended up talking for three hours.
Junior, Olivia Dupre, was matched with her current boyfriend Ethan Brown through the pact. A walking success story, the pair have been dating for almost two years all due to the quiz. "[I] probably would have never met him if I didn't get him as my Marriage Pact [match]," Dupre said.
I have heard a lot of feedback. My [direct messages] are often full. There's been some successful ones. … I have heard quite a handful of stories of people who reached out to their marriage pact and ended up hooking up or dating them. I would say I know at least 10 concrete couples that have met through Marriage Pact.
[But] Marriage Pact has the more achievable aim of finding you someone to be your "perfect backup plan." The difference in underlying objective seems inconsequential, but it wraps Marriage Pact in a more realistic air that, in my experience, made completing the survey feel just slightly more worthwhile.
The idea that it's a cool, fun side quest initially drew me in. But then, after doing it for a bit, [you] see how impactful it can be.
It's kind of refreshing to see something like this where you get to meet someone that you potentially could've spent four years at Princeton and never crossed paths with.
Part of me definitely wonders what's out there just because I haven't really explored the Elon dating scene to its fullest. You never know who is out there or who you share similar interests with.
The nice thing about the Marriage Pact is that it is not binding. It is a great way to meet new people that you would not have necessarily met otherwise. … The ND Marriage Pact offered a low-stakes way for people to meet and talk about things like family goals or professional goals right from the get-go, without fear, because it was all in the survey.
Marriage Pact spread by word of mouth, and became a college tradition long before we ever made a viral social media post about it. Most discussion happens between friends in group chats, dining halls, classes and dorm rooms. Online it happened originally in Facebook meme pages and then on Fizz. But every once in a while, glimpses of the experience will break containment and go viral on the “open internet”. In our first year, we accrued 40 million views, and still more come from people telling their own stories. Here are a few of them.