At the right time of year, someone walking through the campus of the College of William and Mary may be lucky enough to notice a certain buzz in the air. This atmosphere may be reflected by groups of students huddled around laptops, debating animatedly over some survey questions. Or it may be radiating from pairs of cluelessly reciprocated crushes, blushing at their email inboxes. Whatever the telling signs may look like, chances are that the excitement is a symptom of none other than the arrival of Marriage Pact season.
According to its website, the Marriage Pact is a national organization with branches at 88 American colleges, made up almost entirely of full-time students, that uses an algorithm backed by Nobel Prize-winning economics to match the most romantically compatible couples on campus. According to the Stanford Daily, it was founded by Liam McGregor and Sophia Sterling-Angus at Stanford University in 2017 to provide students with backup spouses as a means of saving them from the prospect of dying alone.
The form goes out once a semester at the College. However, the matter of who has been operating the team at the College, and for how long, remains a mystery. For some, like Hannah Findlay ’27, this only adds to the Marriage Pact’s allure.
“I just wanted to see what the process was like, since I feel like I didn’t know anything about it, because it is so anonymous and mysterious,” Findlay said. “I just wanted to see what happens, just generally what the process is like. It makes you want to fill it out, because you’re like, ‘I don’t know what it is. I just know the name: ‘Marriage Pact.’ It’s enticing.”
In fact, Aafreen Ali ’26 recalled having found out about Marriage Pact from other students, which contrasted from the widely advertised, organized marketing style that registered student organizations tend to use for many other campus events and traditions.
Meanwhile, four-time Marriage Pact participant Kyle Lewis-Johnson ’25 first found out about the program through an email.
“I looked at it in my email and I was like, ‘What do you have to lose? Nothing. What do you have to gain? Nothing, or something,’ I don’t know,” Lewis-Johnson said. “It depends on how you look at it.”
Lewis-Johnson said he was convinced to engage in the Marriage Pact to see if it actually worked.
“I guess a lot of us didn’t really believe in the authenticity of the algorithm that they used,” Lewis-Johnson said. “So we were like, well, let’s get to know this person and see if the algorithm actually algorithmed, per se, or if it’s BS.”
Likewise, Ali went into the experience with curious skepticism.
“Honestly, I went in with no expectations,” Ali said. “I was just kind of like, ‘This is something fun. All my friends are doing it.’ I feel like that’s the same mindset a lot of people are using with it.”
After either clicking on the link through email or navigating to the College’s Marriage Pact website, users are directed to a survey-style form. Lewis-Jonhson explained that this form includes questions about someone’s own and preferred class year, political ideology, religion, gender and sexual orientation, followed by questions which measure one’s attitudes such as “Do you think that the world needs to be more structured?” Findlay pointed out that there are even questions for gauging one’s sexual habits, like “How kinky are you?”
Findlay recalled how anxious she felt after submitting the form, due to the depth of personal information recorded.
“I felt like I was just sending off my Social Security number,” Findlay said. “I was like, ‘They know everything now. Everything. All my political beliefs, all my relationship beliefs.’”
Some time after submitting the form, which is open for around two weeks, participants are emailed the first and last initials of the person they are deemed most compatible with so far. While these initials are subject to change in the time before the final results come out, Findlay communicated how she appreciates the excitement and speculation invited by this step in the process.
“Those emails were pretty fun to get, because we’d get them, and everyone would compare and look on Instagram to see anyone with those initials,” Findlay said.
Speaking to the final results, Findlay reflected on how she has gotten diverse outcomes from the two times she has tried Marriage Pact. She was matched with someone who she was familiar with the first time, but neither contacted one another. The second time, her match took the initiative to send her long, formal messages addressed to “Miss Findlay.”
As for Lewis-Johnson, his first Marriage Pact match was with his freshman year roommate.
“We were dumbfounded,” Lewis-Johnson said. “I was like, ‘What?’ and I told him, ‘Either the algorithm is f—ed up or you cheated,’ because we did it together.”
One year later, he shared such a high compatibility score with his second match that the pair was interviewed by Marriage Pact’s Stanford University branch admin. However, the two did not end up speaking afterwards.
By contrast, his third match was his best friend’s roommate. He said that he did not connect the dots at first, having recognized his first name but not believing it was him.
Lewis-Johnson recalled the way his match listened silently to him questioning his match’s identity, while knowing it was him all the while. He also shared that the two dated for three months, before ultimately breaking up over differences in what they wanted from the relationship.
Equally diverse were Ali’s Marriage Pact experiences. She explained that the first one resulted in just a mutual following on Instagram. The second one also did not lead to a relationship, because the fact that the pair shared mutuals made things awkward. Most successful was Ali’s third try, which paired her with a fellow member of the Alpha Phi Omega Service Fraternity.
All things considered, Findlay believes that the within-school email addresses required by the Marriage Pact’s application form serve as a strength over traditional dating apps, because this restricts participation to students of the College.
“It helps with conversation starters,” Findlay said. “You know you can talk about the school, you know you can talk about being a student here and you can talk about friends.”
Similarly, Lewis-Johnson identified the Marriage Pact as a helpful tool for introverts looking to socialize with others.
“If you’re not really an extroverted person, it’s a good way to match you up with a person, and kind of gives you a nudge to be like, maybe you should talk to this person, because this algorithm hypothetically is saying you are this compatible,” Lewis-Johnson said.
Even so, Findlay expressed that she is not planning on doing the Marriage Pact again next semester. She explained that her results have only affirmed the outlook she has held from the beginning.
“I feel like Marriage Pact is in my eyes, and for some people, more so fun to do, fun to see what you get, but nothing serious,” Findlay said. “There would be no point in me filling it out again and matching with someone, knowing that I completely do not take it very seriously anymore.”
In terms of taking the algorithm seriously, Lewis-Johnson mused that the title perhaps does not help to dispel the high hopes held by some students.
“I would say maybe the fact that it’s called the Marriage Pact, maybe that could construe people to think, ‘I have to go further with this. I have to make this something that it’s maybe not meant to be, or that it’s not actually going to be,’” Lewis-Johnson said.
With that in mind, Ali recommends that students manage expectations in order to keep the Marriage Pact from being a disappointing experience.
“We’re all adults, and we’ve been around long enough to know that maybe this isn’t the best way to look for a relationship,” Ali said. “It certainly is a way to meet more people, but at the end of the day, you might be perfect on paper and it’s not going to work out, and you might consider exploring more avenues.”
Ali promoted student organizations as a tried and true alternative for meeting people. She listed big and small, high and low stakes groups as a testament to how there is something for everyone, as well as countless opportunities to meet friends and even that special someone.
Ali pointed out that one weakness of the Marriage Pact is that its list of questions and matching mechanisms cannot promise connections at the end of the day.
“People have spent their entire lives looking for love sometimes, and it never happens, which is deeply tragic, but it’s really just something that happens,” Ali said. “You can’t force it. So if you see this as kind of a way to manufacture love, that’s not really what it’s about.”
Ali also listed another weakness given the context of the College’s small, interconnected campus.
“If you do get matched with somebody that you vaguely know of, or you have mutuals with, and you’re not really sure if it will be socially awkward or have repercussions in that way, that gets kind of weird,” Ali said. “Everybody knows everybody here.”
Likewise, Ali admitted that there is no way to guarantee accountability in the Marriage Pact. She described a possible scenario in which someone may truly desire a connection and decide to reach out, even though nothing is forcing the other person to ever respond.
“Once you get it, you just have it. You can sit on that information or you can do something about it,” Ali said. “So it’s really down to the people who are matched and their own choices.”
Lewis-Johnson stressed that there does not have to be radio silence on the other end of the Marriage Pact email chain, however. He said he encourages fellow students to take a leap of faith by actually reaching out to their matches.
“It’s okay to feel nervous, but I also think that you should just go out on a limb and message them if you’re not getting anything back from them, or wait for them to message you and then respond, whatever you feel comfortable with,” Lewis-Johnson said. “If neither one of you messages, somebody’s got to take the first shot.”
Ali expressed that she intends to do the Marriage Pact again, and although Lewis-Johnson is a senior, he urges anyone who is able to try it out next time.
“Why not? You only live once. We’re all experiencing life. Veer off. Everybody has their mindset about, this is what I want to do in life. Go off, take a little detour every now and then. It adds more interest to your life,” Lewis-Johnson said.