Going to an Ivy League school does not make you more likely to get married or make your marriage better. Sure, if you’re dead set on marrying an Ivy League graduate, your chances of meeting one are much better if you attend an ivy league school yourself.
Go to school, get involved and try to get out and about and meet people. You don’t have to meet your future spouse in college. I know plenty of people, including me, who didn’t.
My kids live in NYC, so there is a critical mass of people who went to their schools. I think if they were living in a more remote place then it would be less likely for them to hang out with people from school. To them it is a benefit of living in NYC.
@Hoggirl Iooked at that link and members of the League come from a variety of colleges and universities. Not sure what qualifies as an “elite.”
My daughter, a Wellesley grad who was also accepted to Harvard married a brilliant, educated man who graduated from–gasp!–University of New Hampshire and New England Conservatory.
Her high school friend is a Stanford grad married to a graduate of UC Davis.
You will find an educated woman to marry.
I think it’s possible that some women screen potential dates based partly on criteria important to them. If what is important to them includes being a highly intelligent person, they may look for indications that this might be the case. Probably few would draw a line as narrowly as graduates of one of eight particular universities. But on the other hand being one of those graduates might help “qualify”. Along with lots of other things.
I’m talking about initial meeting, eg the stage of deciding whether to give someone her number at a party. Once you actually go out, your chemistry as people is what matters. But if there isn’t a first date, it won’t get to that stage.
There are lots of other ways people meet that completely bypass this superficial screening stage. And people probably vary quite a bit in what most matters to them, and how much they can or do screen.
As a parent I can say with confidence that sometimes Parents Can Be Weird. We’re creatures of our experiences, many of which we gathered a long time ago in another world. I’m sure most of us think we know our blind spots, but by definition it’s kind of hard to know for sure. So take some of the stuff that sounds odd with a grain of salt, try to assume good intent, maybe find what value is to be had before moving on. It sounds like OP has the proper level of incredulity and humor, but I just wanted to clearly support the initial raised eyebrow response.
Parents do get a lot of input because (generally) they are footing the bill.
My parents attended Columbia and Chicago, and met at Michigan in grad school. I met my wife at Michigan too. There are wonderful, brilliant college women all over, but the density is highest at the major research universities.
Chances are that you won’t meet your spouse in undergrad. Most people do so at work or grad school. Just don’t exclude the Ivy’s just because your parents want you do go (you will make them happy) Apply to them (chances are you won’t get in anyway) and others that fit you well. Just attend the best college your family can afford.
Among those who do meet in school, the terminal degree tends to be common. However, relatively few couples meet through school. An especially small portion of the general population meets through grad school since few pursue grad school, although Ivy League type students are overrperesnted since they have a decent rate of pursuing grad degrees.
For example, the study at https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_et_al_Disintermediating_Friends.pdf found the following most common ways heterosexual couples met in 2017. The results are based on a survey of 3,500 adults in the United States. The portion who met in college peaked in 1940, which was the first surveyed decade and has been slowly dropping since then. Other surveys that phrase questions differently also find that only a small portion meet during college.
By the time you get married, it probably won’t matter anymore where either you or your prospective spouse went to school- even if where you went to school would have mattered to either of you when you were younger. Aside from certain demographic groups, most educated people are more concerned with career throughout their 20s than with finding a spouse. I never thought about getting married while I was in university and none of my paramours at that time were what I ever would have considered marriage material! I dont’ know anyone from my UC school who married their college boyfriend or girlfriend.
@kimberlymacg, likely true. However, for better or worse, I found that at a certain age (mid-to-late 20s in grad school and my first job as a business school professor), I hit an age where a number of the women I met had the equivalent of a checklist (nice guy, not terrible looking, athletic, Ivy pedigree, likely attractive career trajectory , and for some Jewish) made me instantly attractive (whereas in college before similar women have found the niceness, the heavy academic pedigree in a STEM field, etc. to be much less attractive). This didn’t alter the pool – whoever I was meeting in grad school and on the job – but the pedigree may have altered my perceived attractiveness.
I also think that going to at least some of these schools makes one more likely to swim in a pool of similar people post-school. I worked for one year in NY and used the alumni club as a way to meet people when I was finding it difficult otherwise. I live in New England, where people are highly attuned to where one went to school (recall Harvard Tourette’s) but we are in a pool that is highly enriched in terms of HYP, Penn, MIT, Cornell, but also Wellesley (married folks from MIT or H) etc. Most artist friends went to non-Ivy institutions (other than Yale and maybe Columbia, the best art schools are not Ivies),
If I’m right, @kimberlymacg, there is a still a delayed effect of the pedigree. But, then again, maybe my sample of boomers be dated – if a plurality of people are finding mates online, maybe that diminishes the likelihood of any Ivy ocuplings…
Now that I think about it, I too used the alumni club, in part, as a way to meet people, in two different cities. The first one I was single and actually dated somebody I met there.
The alumni clubs had other utilty though, beyond that (eg interesting speakers coming in to give talks, some fun activities), so that was far from the only reason I went there. But still…
@kimberlymacg I agree that the attitude you describe exists and is very common, but it’s nowhere near universal, or even a majority approach among high-achievement kids. (Among non-high-achievement kids, it is not at all common.)
Outside of New York and San Francisco, hardly any of the young people I know who are interested in marriage waited until their 30s to find a partner. When I look at my children and their close friends, I see a whole bunch of people getting married at 29 or 30 to people with whom they have been involved for a number of years. I can count at least six cases of married couples who met in college (although in some cases, including that of my son, they did not become romantically involved until after college), and two couples where the people met in high school or middle school and reconnected shortly after college.
My H and I didn’t meet in or even attend the same U. We met after I was done with my grad school. In fact none of my sibs or nieces met their spouses in college.
One sib met his spouse when they were in HS but they didn’t date until they were attending college. One sib met her H when they were in grad/med school, three met via mutual friends. I met H because we were on same volleyball team. My nieces and nephew and S met their partners online!
I doubt people wait until a certain age before looking for a partner. Those who are older/behind their peers in romance more likely did not meet the right person until later or were more mature socially to make connections. Some are less mainstream than others (ethnicity, education, intelligence, religious beliefs et al) so the pool of compatible people is much smaller than for most.
Going way back to the OP’s parental thoughts. OP- note how many did NOT meet their spouse in their undergrad school. Graduate/professional educationmay not be at an Ivy for those few who attend an Ivy for undergrad. Hmm- does having only a bachelor’s degree from an Ivy seem more prestigious than an advanced degree from elsewhere?
Again, OP, do not dismiss those Ivy league sports schools but hopefully your mother can learn that they are not superior to all other schools despite any reputation. Go for the best fit for your academic ability and interests plus the many other factors. The atmosphere of the Ivys is certainly not for all of us. Plus they do not represent the top students as there are many better students who go elsewhere.