My H and I met in college (28 years ago) but my kids say that the dating culture has changed in college. More hook-ups, less commitment. My D is a recent grad and purposefully avoids commitments, even though she occasionally dates. She has long-term goals and doesn’t want to derail them with a relationship. I secretly think she just hasn’t met the right guy yet. Her “goals” may change when she falls in love. On the other hand, my S is a college soph. He has recently met “the guy of his dreams” (yeah, he’s gay) and they are already talking marriage. Nice that it is a real possibility for him these days, but we had to tell him that the tuition spigot gets turned off if he marries before graduation. 
Where I live, the young people are getting older before marrying. A lot of living together before getting married. However, in other areas, notably the south and southwest, where I have friends and family, still a lot of young marriages. Big differences in the ages of the bride/groom when I look at them geographically.
Oh, yes. Remember when it was called “living in sin,” and people were shocked if you did it? Now, it seems that they’re shocked if you don’t – that you’re being impulsive and flighty if you get married without having shared an apartment for at least a year or two.
My parents met in college. I met my guy in college. My college roomie met her guy in college. My BIL met his gal in college. My oldest met his gal in college. My other two (still in college) don’t have steadies yet. Who knows?
I still think it’s pretty common, but it’s not what any of us went to college for. It just happened.
Just one of my immediate family (including 1st cousins) met their spouses in college. Most of their friends marry much later and not to someone they met in college. However, the ones who didn’t leave the hometown all married much earlier.
My D had a serious BF for 3 years she met in freshman year but broke up after he graduated. I really liked him but she said she wasn’t going to marry someone she met when she was 17 !! >:P
My S had a GF for 2 years in college but I don’t think he was ready to have a committed relationship after college. He focused on his career in his twenties. He was married last June at age 30.
FWIW, I met my wife in college. All of the couples with whom we are friends also met in college, whether it was undergrad or grad.
I met my husband the first week of my second semester in engineering grad school. It was his first semester. I thought he looked very young, and I felt sorry for the Yankee all by himself in Texas! Turns out he was 8 years older than me! My dad was his supervising professor. Three months later, we were engaged. That was in 1985. I still like him!
My D met her future husband (not officially engaged but will happen) in med school where they are now. Only problem is she is an Amherst grad, he is a Williams grad. What a bad position for their future child to be in. Either way, the school color is purple, just different shades.
My nephew and his wife met in middle school and have been friends for years. Started dating junior year of HS. Now expecting a baby!
My sister knew way back then that my nephew and spouse would ultimately get together. They were best buddies and he used to complain about his GFs to her all the time. He and she had so many things on a deep level that connected them, and sure enough, a few years later, they both realized what they had.
I met DH on a blind date, fixed up by a friend from my office and DH was her BIL’s friend. Older d met her SO in grad school and younger d met her SO in college, friends from freshman year but didn’t get together until senior year. Because of grad school, they are in LDR and have been for two plus years.
OP here: wow! I’m surprised with the number of college matches (and even more surprised with the number of people bringing up * high school sweethearts * - I guess where I live, that seems like a bit of a fantasy). For some reason, I expected a lot more “met on the job” stories.
** A lot of you seem to bringing up children and nieces/nephews who met in college. Despite these personal stories, do you think the number of young people marrying people they met in college has seen any significant decrease? Or are young people, in general, meeting future spouses at college at the same rates as their parents (disregarding details about when you marry or whether you live together first). **
Of the 9 23-31 year old young adult/SO pairs at our Christmas Eve/Christmas Day meals, only 1 pair met at college.
DH and I dated in high sch. I was a freshman. He was a senior. Broke up after his first semester of college.
Got back together when I was a freshman and he was a senior in college. Got married eighteen months later.
Maybe it depends on the college and region but looking at my kids there are very few marriages made in college. Perhaps some of these very good friendships will turn into romances later on but it hasn’t happened yet aside from 2 marriages that I know about.
I don’t know many people who have met long-term significant others at college, personally. My fiancé’s parents went to college across the country from each other but met during a college break. His roommate met a girl freshman year of college–the first person either of them had dated–and have been married for a few years now, apparently happily. A good friend of his has been dating a guy since their senior year, and things seem quite serious. One of my friends just got engaged to her college SO. In my experience, however, most of the people I know who date in college do not marry each other. I could tell you more break-up stories than successes.
On the other hand, we have quite a few high school sweetheart marriages in my circle. My parents are one of them, having been married for more than 40 years. Two friends of mine who became a couple in our senior year are to marry in August, and another friend just married the guy she started dating as a ninth grader. One girl married a month after graduation, and they’re expecting their first child this year. And my fiancé and I met and started dating while I was in high school. It’s not unusual for people to marry in their early to mid-20s here, which might be part of why my experiences are different.
Yea, in our family, older sis was the youngest to marry at 24 or so. The rest of us were mainly late 20s to 40s being the oldest. We generally met our spouses later and married them. We are all still married some decades later.
My college estimates that 10% of its grads are married to other grads from the same college.
@Abcde11 IMO you’re really asking a question that has no answer.
For one, many people had parents who didn’t go to college. It wasn’t until recently that there has been an explosion in the number of college students. Further, many of the parents on here likely had mothers who weren’t allowed to go to college either because they were women or because they were married off young.
Secondly, the rise in cohabitation and decrease in marriage rates since the 80s has been astounding. So, even if less people are married now to their college sweethearts, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t meet and start dating their SO in college.
Third, this answer is going to vary widely between regions and college types.
It’s comparing apples to oranges, this time to the past.
Personally, just as someone who has a passing interest in marriage, divorce, and cohabitation demography, I don’t think there’s been any significant decrease since the 80s. I use the 80s because the 70s were really the transitional period where women were still getting married, on average, less than a year after receiving their bachelor’s. By the 80s, women were rejecting this norm and demographically rather little has changed since then. What there has been a change in is the delay of marriage and childbearing because women want to establish careers first. Further, women of my generation (I am in my early-mid 20s) really recognize that is just about zero in the way of childcare support if they decide they want to be a two-career family and feel far less pressure than previous generations (as a whole) to give up their careers and becoming SAHMs or “mommy-track” (I hate that term…). Childless families are significantly on the rise and without children in the picture, couples feel far less pressure to marry- but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still together from college.
Where I (personally) think there’s going to be a difference in the upcoming decades is with more men becoming SAHDs and women marrying and bearing children earlier due to this additional support. This is just totally my guess though.
As I said earlier, my partner and I met in college and have been together since our sophomore year. We’ll be married this summer at 24 years old and we’re the first of our group of friends to get married. His brother (a few years older) is marrying someone from our cohort in college just a few weeks later. However, of the 14 people in our wedding party, over half of them live with their SOs from college. They just are really in no hurry to get married.
I noticed that, in general, the best ones started to get picked off 1st year of college, then, more the second year and so on. This means, that while they are still out there, they get harder and harder to find.
I met my wife in college, in early 20s. But we got married in our mid 20s.
My child met his (knock! knock! This will be “the one”) in the mid-late 20s.
My parents met each other late 20s - essentially an arrange marriage (but the groom and bride themselves, rather than their parents, decided.)
I got the “best deal”. LOL. It was quite surprising that we managed to achieve what we wanted to do at such an early age - without much helps from both families. (But we had our child relatively late.)