OP wrote:
“I told my mother that I DO NOT want to apply to an Ivy League (or top 15) school.”
“She was a little bit disappointed and told me that it may affect my marriage.”
All your mother was suggesting, in my opinion, is that some find intellect, ambition and prospects of future success attractive qualities.
Not an inappropriate comment as OP was the one who apparently initiated the conversation ( as portrayed in this thread ) & is considering attending community college.
Thinking back to when I was single, I can absolutely assure you that having degrees from MIT and Stanford would not improve your chances of getting a date for Saturday night.
I actually am married to a woman who has degrees from an Ivy League school. Where I got my education did not matter to her. The fact that I was a responsible person with a decent job who treats people well did matter to her. Getting a decent job is going to depend a lot on your choice of major, and relatively little on which university you attend. Being responsible and kind has nothing at all to do with what university you attend.
Are you in-state in California? If so then the University of California system is very good. If you are out of state for California then to me it is highly questionable whether the various universities of California are worth the out of state costs.
Oh what a fun topic! My wife turned down an offer from a doctoral program at Harvard, and I turned down an offer from a doctoral program at Princeton. We met one another in a graduate school class at a great public university in the midwest: Wisconsin.
Several decades later, with our children now well into their careers, they’re very happy that my wife and I found one another! They don’t care where we met or attended college.
Believe it or not, spouses with those qualities can actually be found in non-Ivy grads.
Well, this is a new one. Even my oldest kids are not married at this time, nor are most of their age peers, so it’s not like they were meeting their spouses in college. It certainly was not in the picture of where to go to college, marriage prospects, though I guess it can have some effect , as you do have to meet who you marry.
My oldest is in a serious relationship with an Ivy League grad and he just got his Bachelor’s at a local school after taking a 10 year + year break from college But I guess if he’d married while in college, he would likely not have married an Ivy Leaguer.
Not something that even occurred to any of us.
@Data10 Hmmmmm. you do realize these Ivy kids aren’t robots. They are 18-22 young men and women who will date a lot during college which in turn may lead to a long term relationship.
Lots of annecdotal info here, and lots of examples of how I met my wife. But from just a probability standpoint, if you go to a college where almost everyone is very smart/successful (so far in there lives), the chances are that you will find someone of the same ilk. Trust me I know tons of people whose kids married deadbeats, not PHD’s, and some of that was due to the college they went to and whom they met there.
You mentioned Ivy students date a lot during college… In the most recent Harvard senior survey, the majority of Harvard students reported dating either 0 or 1 persons during their time in college. That’s not suggestive of dating a lot.
My earlier post said the majority are focused on academics over meeting their future spouse. This also doesn’t mean the 2 categories are mutually exclusive categories and no one can date while also doing academics, nor does the majority mean 100% of students. However, I’d expect most Ivy students give academics the priority.
This was certainly my experience at Stanford. The vast majority of students I knew were single, and those in relationships appeared to be primarily focused on academics and/or long term non-relationship goals, rather than marriage. However, there were still a minority who eventually married other Stanford students, particularly among the small group of students within my freshman dorm. There were also other secondary connection marriages that happened well after college, such as marrying sister of friend from college.
Well doesn’t sound like you were interested in dating in college then.
I actually was in a relationship during a portion of college. I posted more detail about that relationship in a thread last month. However, while in college I was primarily focused on academics, rather than looking for romantic relationships or marriage. It wasn’t until after graduating and getting a stable job, home, … that I placed more of an emphasis on dating and meeting compatible women. I certainly did not limit “compatible women” to just HYPSM… type grads. My most recent relationship was with a woman who was finishing up her associates degree at a CC while we were dating.
Well I can only say that if you want a red marble, you need to reach into the bag of red marbles, not the blue ones.
Kids don’t randomly marry people who they just happen to meet in college. A person who ends up marrying a deadbeat usually has not been educated in how to tell whether the person they’re marrying is a good person for them or not.
If you believe that the people who marry deadbeats would have done better at an Ivy, you truly don’t understand people. People who end up marrying a deadbeat would have likely ended up marrying somebody who would make them miserable in a different way. Or they would have married an Ivy league educated deadbeat. What, you think that there are none of those?
Do you think that the success rate of marriage among Ivy League graduates is any better? Don’t make me laugh. You really do believe that attending an Ivy automatically makes a person smarter, kinder, better in bed, and smells of cinnamon when they fart?
To read what you write, all Ivy League graduates are caring and loving, great parents who make sure to spend lots of time with their kids, and never forget a birthday or anniversary. They all are romantic and poets at heart, never fight, never cheat, never get divorced.
However, the brutes who attend public universities are mean and selfish, come home drunk and treat their spouses and kids like dirt, spend all their money on booze and cheap flings. They barely speak to each other except to scream, and after the first bestial lust is over, never make love again except when both are drunk. They all get divorced within three years.
@eb23282 is exactly right. Your prospects for love are significantly hindered by your ridiculous mother. Yes, show her the NYT article but also show her eb23282’s response.
@DadTwoGirls yes im from california
“What about Florence Nightingale, or Malala , who put their lives at risk to help others? Are these ladies good enough for your mom?”
Well Malala’s at Oxford. I’m sure that’s good enough for mom 
Choosing a spouse is far more nuanced than just reaching in a bag of marbles and randomly getting paired with someone from that group. For example, if a marriage minded student at a big flagship was looking for someone “smart/successful (so far in there lives)”, I’d expect there would be a larger number of students who meet that criteria at the large population flagships than at the relatively smaller Ivies. And it is quite possible for students to “find their tribe” of like minded persons within a big college. Such a student wouldn’t randomly get paired with someone at the big flagship who didn’t share any of the criteria they value. Instead most persons would actively choose to date people who share various criteria they value and most would avoid persons who have various characteristics that they dislike.
There may be a higher concentration or number of potential romantic partners who share criteria you value at Ivies or they may not. You might instead find a higher concentration through activities with friends or family, at a future job, on a dating site, at church, through local volunteer activities, or wherever. It depends on what criteria you value in a partner, which is likely to be very different from what criteria the college values in their admission process.
However, as I’ve said, I very much doubt typical Ivy students are focused on finding a spouse during undergrad like this, particularly among the small minority of Ivy League future PhD students you mentioned. If anything choosing to marry a spouse from undergrad might put future PhD plans on hold.
precisely, it’s ridiculous to assume that a grad of oxford or of any other college is any lass worth marrying.
This is reminding me of the controversial article from a few years ago - “Princeton mom to female students: ‘Find a husband on campus’”
Those of us who read the New York Time wedding announcements this weekend saw the following relevant bit: “The couple [a 72-year-old and a 50-year-old] met in 2003 on the dating website the Right Stuff, which requires proof of graduation from certain universities.” The Times commented, dryly, “Harvard made the cut.”
However, it’s worth noting that the groom’s college degree was from Rutgers. Rutgers might not have been enough for Right Stuff, were it not for his Harvard law degree, or maybe his second BA at Oxford, or his clerkships with Judge Friendly and Justice Marshall (folks, that’s top-of-the-pyramid prestigious).
So . . . proof positive both that college choice might affect your marriage prospects in some respects, and that you can nevertheless recover from a prosaic college choice with some really flashy graduate education.