The 'Marriage Pact' is today on 88 college campuses around the U.S. for students looking for love
A college student is helping young adults feel more confident in the future of their love life with a new insurance policy tool.
Finding "the one" can be something that happens early in life for some people — or later on for others.
In 2022, the average age of marriage for a female was 30, while the average age of marriage for a male was 32, according to the Knot.
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Liam McGregor, however, is making sure that even those at the age of 30 and 32 have some sort of "insurance policy" for living a life in marriage.
In 2017, McGregor and another college student started the Marriage Pact — a tool for students at Stanford University to have a spousal "backup plan."
The Marriage Pact is a survey that college students can take to see who they are compatible with at their school. (iStock)
Here's how it works
Essentially, students who signed up would take a questionnaire that would then match them with someone on campus, a percentage of quality and an email address to reach out if they so choose.
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McGregor told Fox News Digital the purpose of the pact.
"A marriage pact is an informal agreement between two people that if both parties remain unmarried by the time they turn 30 or 40, to simply marry each other," he said.
McGregor told Fox News Digital that many people do end up reaching out to their compatibility match. (iStock)
He added, "When you look up from your career in your mid-30s and realize you never prioritized ‘the one’ … you're going to need a backup plan. The Marriage Pact matches you with your optimal backup plan in your community, based on what really matters in lifelong relationships."
The algorithm
The questions on the Marriage Pact vary based on the particular college campus — and students can only be matched with others from their same school.
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The 50-question survey is based on core values, according to the Associated Press, and includes questions about communication styles, conflict resolution, smoking and drug habits and more.
The Marriage Pact started at Stanford — and has now expanded to 88 schools across the country. (iStock)
McGregor told Fox News Digital that the algorithm doesn't ask for pictures, height or any of the other typical dating site criteria — saying there's "no swiping or search[ing]."
An example of a question used at the University of Michigan is: "There is a place for revenge when someone has wronged me."
From there, the students must rate their response on a scale of one to seven, with one being "turn the other cheek" and seven being "plotting rn (right now)."
A question on the Boston College Marriage Pact is: "I would end a friendship over differing political views."
An example of a Marriage Pact survey question at the University of Michigan. (Marriage Pact)
Notre Dame has one that reads: "I would send older relatives to a nursing home."
Based on how individuals respond, the algorithm attempts to match them with their optimal marriage backup plan partner.
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"It's designed using decades of relationship science research to match you with the person who you're most likely to be compatible with in the long term," he said.
Instant interest
The economics student, who graduated from Stanford University in 2020, had over 1,000 people sign up from Stanford on the first day, followed by another 1,000 the next and so on.
McGregor said that by the end of the first week of Marriage Pact, 60% of Stanford students had signed up to get their "optimal marital backup plan."
McGregor told Fox News Digital he was "floored" by the initial response to the survey.
"The way people describe it, it's the only thing people can talk about for weeks when the Marriage Pact happens at their school," he said.
The research team at Marriage Pact along with data from the U.S. Dept. of Education found that students from 14 schools are more likely to participate in the survey than graduate. (Marriage Pact)
Now, seven years later, Marriage Pact is on 88 college campuses across the country and has nearly 500,000 participants.
The U.S. Department of Education and Marriage Pact say there are 14 schools where students are more likely to make a pact by the end of their senior year than students who will graduate.
McGregor said students from 15 different schools initially tried to join the Marriage Pact when it was released at Stanford — and the interest grew from there.
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In the fall of 2020, the Marriage Pact was in seven schools — and by the spring of 2021, it was in 50.
Successful relationships
McGregor told the AP that about 30% of matches meet up in person and one in nine of those end up dating for a year or longer — many actually getting married.
(McGregor did not say whether he himself is in a Marriage Pact.)
For example, Max Walker and Melia Summers joined the Marriage Pact as New York University students in the fall of 2020.
Walker was at the New York campus, while Summers was at NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus, per the AP.
Summers eventually decided to do a semester in New York. That's when she and Walker met for the first time and went on a date — nearly one year after their match.
The pair will wed in June 2024 after having a match rate of 99.65%.
McGregor said that some of the successful relationships from the Marriage Pact "make sense."
"The matching algorithm is really good, so it's just fun for me to see it choose people's best matches out of thousands of possible people at their school," he said.
As for if McGregor is in a Marriage Pact, he politely said "no comment."
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
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Brittany Kasko is a lifestyle production assistant with Fox News Digital.
