Marriage Pact recently came to Fordham University for another year of matchmaking. The organization originated at Stanford University and has offered its services to the Fordham community, aimed at helping students find their soulmates.
The program works by providing a survey backed by research on romantic compatibility for students to fill out. Questions range from: “Would you date someone with a different political affiliation than you?” to “What is your communication style?” Marriage Pact’s algorithm then matches students based on their responses to the questionnaire. After students are matched, they receive an email with their match’s name, after which students may meet up with their match if they desire.
“I think it’s super fun,” said Val Arnold, FCRH ’26, one of the Marriage Pact organizers at Fordham. “It’s a cool way to bring the community together. It’s so unserious and silly.”
The Marriage Pact website outlines the organization’s goal to provide college students with a backup plan if they don’t meet the love of their life before a certain age. Their website states, “Do you really want to look up from your cubicle when you’re forty to find yourself alone? There’s no time to lose. Leave it up to our algorithm and find your perfect backup plan.”
According to their website, Marriage Pact has 541,377 participants across 100 college campuses nationwide and has made 267,996 matches. With each match, they ensure that people’s relationship “likes, loves, and pickiest non-negotiables” are served.
At Fordham, three students were responsible for garnering participation in this year’s round of Marriage Pact matchmaking. Arnold, Matthew Bloss-Baum, FCRH ’27, and Anna Fahy, FCRH ’25, all spread the word about the program by sending messages through text channels and posting on social media.
“We just thought of different groups on campus that we wanted to reach, and we all texted different people and helped spread the message through text channels and then eventually social media,” Arnold said.
The three students had one main point of contact from Marriage Pact, Allyson Bunch, Stanford Class of 2025. The students received daily check-ins from Bunch to see how outreach for the program was going and offered ways to increase participation with Marriage Pact.
“Obviously she doesn’t really know the makeup of Fordham. So there is one representative for each campus that does it, and she was the one that was in communication with us, and we served on the Fordham side,” Arnold said.
The questionnaire closed last week, and matches were sent to students shortly after. Fordham had 1,567 students participate, including 400 first-years, 393 sophomores, 383 juniors and 452 seniors. Of the people who participated, 67% were female, 31% were male and 1.35% were non-binary, according to Arnold.
Because there was not an even number of male and female as well as homosexual and heterosexual participants, not everyone was able to get a love match. Everyone did get a match, but for some, it was a friendship match.
“Since there were more girls than guys that answered it, some of the matches were friendship matches just because there were two heterosexual females that matched together, based on personality,” Arnold said.
Arnold, Bloss-Baum and Fahy participated in the questionnaire themselves, and each received their own match. Arnold explained that she participated last year and thought it was a fun opportunity, which led her to help run the program this year. Other students who participated showed lots of enthusiasm for the chance to find their soulmate.
“I was really excited when I got the email about Marriage Pact,” said Sierra Rock, FCRH ’28. “I feel like there is a very large hookup culture at Fordham, so I was curious to see if I could get matched with someone that I was actually interested in. I definitely plan to keep participating in it in the next few years, and who knows, maybe one of the times someone might interest me.”
