<p>what’s the dating scene like?</p>
<p>Hahahaha…</p>
<p>What mflevity says–that’s pretty much how my junior Carl daughter feels. :)</p>
<p>hahah i take that as “nonexistent”?</p>
<p>well, according to the students I talked to during my accepted students days, something like 60% of Carleton grads marry other Carls.
So I don’t know what it says about the dating scene, but it says something!</p>
<p>A popular statistic (the 60% marriage one) but it’s completely untrue. I used that one on many tours as a student only to later learn that it was a popular myth that got passed along. My sense is that this is a common feature of college tours (they are a little like the game “telephone”), some tour guide misunderstands a statistic and then uses it endlessly, they train a new tour guide who learns the same false statistic and then it takes off. I sometimes wonder how many things I said on my tours that I was certain were true and that in reality may have been based only on hearsay.</p>
<p>In general, the primary modes of relationships at most colleges seem to be either serial monagamy or random hook-ups. There is not so much traditional dating. I’m not an expert on Carleton, but I imagine that it is little different from other colleges in this regard.</p>
<p>Yeah, the 60% thing is NOT true. Sure, plenty of Carls marry their classmates, but the same thing happens at all colleges.</p>
<p>I just found the phrase “dating scene” hilarious, especially because it was in reference to Carleton.</p>
<p>It’s funny how trends show up in LACs. I’m planning to apply to both Carleton and Grinnell in fall and I just got a mailing from Grinnell that says “during speeches and words of wisdom, the new Grinnellians learn one especially noteworth statistic: 60 percent of Grinnellians marry other Grinnellians.” There’s probably some truth underlying this stuff, but I think it’s an odd coincidence that both schools throw out the same number. don’t you?</p>
<p>60% is clearly too high, but here’s what I’ve found:
In 1949 a Carletonian article estimated that 12% of Carleton alums married other Carleton alums, and that a 1964 survey indicated that 17% of the alumni at that time were married to other alums.</p>
<p>In the early 90’s, an alum/staffer posted the following to an alum discussion board:
The last time I counted, it was close to 20%. This is based on the following procedure. You create a list of alumni from the Advance database. Next you combine households, so that they only get one mailing. This reduces the list by about 10%. That means that 10% of the people are married to another 10% of the people. </p>
<p>Now that process would erroneously include folks living together, but not married. At the same time, it would not count those who divorced or where a spouse was deceased. </p>
<p>For 1978, there are 12% currently married to Carls.</p>
<p>One thing I’ve found curious is the number of Carl/Carl marriages that started after college. One couple from '80 started dating after their 10th reunion. I know several couples who did not know each other at school, but subsequently met through friends.</p>