@RichInPitt : I think that you misunderstood my post which you referenced in your post #24 above.
Simply put: It is the qualities, not the schools.
@MWolf your comment is cracking me up! My husband and I both graduated from tOSU, but (grudgingly!) convinced our senior daughter to apply to UoM as a safety. It may just kill us both if she ends up going there AND meets her future spouse there:)
Your odds of meeting ambitious, accomplished, well-off peers are higher in selective elite colleges than at any community college or state school so yes statistically your odds of marrying one are also higher there as most people tend to date people around them.
That being said, most humans are shallow so if you are beautiful or wealthy then your odds of marrying well are much higher than much more intelligent, talented or nicer people.
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I donât disagree, though I wonder if we have any data to support this? But I would be interested in the odds of divorce for each of those 2 groups also.
I graduated with from an instate public, and my husband graduated from an ivy.
The problem we encountered was HIS mother who had other ideas for her son and no one would be good enough. (BTW, She went to a CC.) My husband was educated enough to ignore her issues.
The point is you donât know who youâll end up with and it doesnât matter where, or how, or by what means they achieve their education because your focus will be your mutual love and respect for one another.
Thatâs an interesting but completely different debate. Weâll need to start another thread for it.
[quote=âMWolf, post:33, topic:2073196â]
I certainly think you can find deadbeats at Ivy League schools and wonder people at all the other kajillion colleges in the world. That said, FWIW, according to our 2003 class survey (The most recent one I have on hand.) 74% of respondents have only been in one marriage or partnership. Itâs a 2003 survey and half of those in partnerships were in states that did not allow gay marriage at the time. One quarter met their partners through college/grad school.
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A person does not hve to be an ivy grad to be an intellectual peer. ANd in this day and age it may be the sign of smarts to go to a more affordable college 
Ask your mother if sheâd rather have you date an Ivy grad with a boatload of debt, or a smart public school grad who is debt free.
@jym626, although the debt argument is powerful, it could come back to haunt the young man. Some day, he might find himself in a serious relationship with a person with significant student debt. He may not want to plant the seeds of the idea that his parents should object to marrying a person who is in that situation.
(Full disclosure: My daughter was 100K in debt from her MBA program when she got engaged. People with student debt are not on some sort of marriage blacklist.)
@Marian - That is a big debtload. Now if a person came out of a solid program with great $$$ job prospects, I like the advice of one of the local talk show financial gurus here that one should try to not come out of school with more debt than they can expect to earn their first year of employment. If debt is manageable, that is one thing, but it can be a huge challenge for new couples when they have to make decisions about housing, a car, paying for a wedding, etc. Kudos to your daughter.
My younger sâs wife had grad school debt when she finished school. I donât know how much and I never asked. They had been dating since college and had a long distance relationship for several years. She was VERY frugal with her money and worked a lot after college and while in grad school so even though she was incurring debt, there was a long track record of being fiscally responsible. But, TBH, if, just as an example, heâd gotten into a new relationship someone with a massive amount of debt and whose debt way outweighted their earning power, it might give me pause.
Fortunately its a non issue.
My point was, the OPâs mom is being very shortsighted.
Her nightmare scenario would be mediocre public school grad with lots of credit card debt.
Ivy colleges tend to have excellent grant financial aid and wealthy student bodies, so the portion of grads who are debt free is high. HYP tends to be especially good in terms of top FA and % debt free (after undergrad). Harvard claims â100% of students can graduate debt free.â Public colleges tend to have not as wealthy student bodies and worse FA, so a larger portion of students tend to have debt, although there are many exceptions, including some students attending public cost at near $0 cost due to merit scholarships.
The highest debt levels of all occur for professional schools. Grads from some medical and dental schools have a median of over $300k debt at graduation. If you want to avoid marrying debt, then that will remove a large portion of future doctors, dentists, lawyers, MBAs, and others with advanced professional degrees from consideration.
However, if debt is really important (I have no reason to believe it is important to the OP), then one could simply ask about debt and future degree plans that will require debt at some point during the relationship, then let that information contribute to future decisions. In my opinion, the far more important consideration is compatible financial habits and decisions, which can not be well estimated based on college attended or degrees.
Actually most Ivy League grads I know (or at least know well) are not married to fellow ivy league grads.
Dâs friendâs dad went to Harvard for law schoolâŠhis ex wife went to a Cal State school and his current wife didnât go to college.
Dâs other friendâs dad went to Harvard for both undergrad and medical school. His wife didnât go to Harvard or any ivy league school. Dâs friendâs older sister followed her Dadâs footsteps and went to Harvard and got a job at Harvard and met her husband while working at Harvard (he also went to Harvard)
Hâs co worker went to Yale, his wife went to USC (not ivy league, but a great school)
I know other Ivy League grads but these are the ones I know the best.
Most people I know graduated from a variety of Universities and Colleges and are happily married.
And most people I know did not meet their spouse in college but I know people who did!
My niece went to USC and met her husband there and theyâre happily married.
A co worker of mine went to University of Texas and met her Husband who went to Rice at some sporting event or something while she was in collegeâŠ
And an old high school friend of mine met her husband after college at an alumni eventâŠso they went to the same school but didnât actually meet while they were in attendance thereâŠ
I met my H at workâŠ5 years after I graduated college.
Lots of ways to meet people!
I agree with @Publisher. I think that your mom mom is not coming from a bad place. As a mom sometimes I say the strangest things to my children and I donât realize it until later and sometimes it just comes out wrong. Take it with a grain of salt. Iâm sure she is just looking out for your best interest. You have a lot going on right as senior to be worrying about marriage right now.
Just curious, did your mom go to an IVY? ?
Anyone else have a cringe attack while reading the OP?
I see no reason one has to marry someone from the Ivy League (or top 15 school). Disclaimer: I attended three of HYPSM and taught at one and I married someone who did not. My wife is very talented, bright and incredibly capable. But, out of my suite of six, three married women who went to Ivies (one from across the hall in sophomore dorm and two from different schools).
But, I do see a some naivete in this thread (as well as many others about prestige). In current American society, women tend to marry up in terms of wealth, status and age. Men tend to marry down. This may be changing somewhat: I see some flexibility with regard to women marrying down in age among folks I see in Silicon Valley. But, the generalization is still largely accurate. At a different point in the status hierarchy, women with college degrees tend not to date or marry men with college degrees. As a consequence, to the extent the objective is marrying a high status individual, it would be better to follow a track to high status.
Nonetheless, I have a hard time seeing why marrying an Ivy League spouse is even a plausible objective. Is this about money? Genetics? I want my kids to marry people who are warm, supportive, well-adjusted and reasonably successful in their work lives. To the extent going to a high status school makes that more likely, that might be a better pond to fish in, but after graduation, you can look for warm, supportive, well-adjusted and reasonably successful women. Focus on function, not form. I think the issue is how to find the right pool of people.
Here is a disturbing yet interesting bit of information: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/29/upshot/college-marriage-class-differences.html. Folks who enter the Ivies (this article focused on Princeton) from the bottom fifth of the income distribution appear less likely to marry than those from higher quintiles. The article suggests that the amount of student debt is one proximate cause. One conclusion from that for the OPâs mother: graduating with higher debt levels may delay marriage and child-bearing. See https://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/wp_2016-9_rev.pdf and https://www.nbcnews.com/better/money/burdened-record-amount-debt-graduates-delay-marriage-n219371.
And many ivy league grads go on to professional school and incur this debt. And yes, the elites are often quite generous, but as you likely know, what they consider âfull needâ may not equate with the familyâs need.
When we went to an admitted student event, the president of the school said, âlook to your left and look to your right, he or she may be your future mother/father-in-law.â It got a very good chuckle out of everyone.
Both of my kids are out of college now and their circle of friends are still from college/high school. D2 is in law school in NYC now, and some of her best friends are still from college. They have met some nice people from work, but none they would call âclose friends.â If they were single, I donât think they would date anyone from work.
I read an article few years back that many people do marry someone from their school, even if they didnât know each other while in school. It is common experience they share that bring them together.
Yes, I am aware that âfull needâ does not meet 100% of familyâs need in all cases. The point was favoring public school grads over Ivy grads to avoid risking meeting a potential spouse with debt is likely to backfire since Ivy grads as whole are more likely to graduate without debt. Some example numbers from Harvard based on the federal CollegeScorecard database are below.
Harvard
2% of grads have federal loans
Among the rare few who borrow, typical debt = $6,100
Average cost after grant/scholarships (not loans) for fed aid families with incomesâŠ
Under $30k = -$200 (negative) net cost
$30 to $48k = $600 net cost
$48k to $75k = $3.3k net cost
$75k to $110k = $15.6k net cost
U Mass: Amherst
57% of grads have federal loans
Among the large majority who borrow, typical debt = $23,400
Average cost after grants/scholarships (not loans) for fed aid families with incomesâŠ
Under $30k = $11.8k net cost
$30 to $48k = $12.5k net cost
$48k to $75k = $16.9k net cost
$75k to $110k = $23.1k net cost