Picture this: overwhelmed by p-sets and Week 9 midterms, two gorgeous, brilliant Stanford students have no time for love. It’s a devastating conundrum — and an unacceptable one. Wouldn’t it be a shame to waste all of Stanford’s romantic potential?
So these students turn to the Marriage Pact, a 50-question quiz that identifies compatible couples and facilitates a promise: should both individuals find themselves single in the future, they will wed their beloved backup option. Shortly after, a fateful email appears.
“Dear [Name], your optimal Stanford Marriage Pact is…”
The soulmates schedule lunch at Arrillaga. Turns out their 100% compatibility isn’t an algorithmic illusion. There’s chemistry — the irresistible kind. Forgoing the pact, they date, graduate and start their lives in Silicon Valley, where they raise two kids and a cybertruck.
It’s the stuff of romance novels…or one dreamily improbable outcome of the Marriage Pact.
Created by Stanford students in 2017, the Pact has assigned 268,000 matches at 100 universities. Each question is on a 1-7 sliding scale, where participants offer opinions on the provocative (“I generally take control during sex”) to the political (“I always vote”). The Pact then “feed[s] your likes, loves, and pickiest non-negotiables to our matching algorithm.” The algorithm produces — if not an eternal soulmate — an efficient plan of love.
This year’s Stanford Marriage Pact garnered 5,386 responses. As signups poured in and the algorithm worked its magic, sporadic emails revealed the major and initials of one’s then-best match—fueling on-campus hype and speculation.
Last Tuesday, final match announcements disrupted the pre-break sluggishness of Week 9, “[unleashing] a wave of chaos romance,” as a Pact email wrote.
To celebrate the match release, On Call Café hosted “Marriage Pact x On Call” through Week 10. Every night, the first 25 matched couples to attend On Call received free drinks.
At On Call, The Daily spoke to multiple pairs of Marriage Pact lovebirds about their burgeoning “romances.” The following conversations have been edited for length and clarity.
The Stanford Daily (TSD): Why did you enter the Marriage Pact? What were your expectations?
1. Divya Venkat Sridhar ’28 & Colin Weis ’28
Sridhar: Honestly, it felt like a community thing. Everyone was doing it. I was like, “it’s nice to meet people who are not usually in [my] circle.” That’s what I was looking for — somebody with similar interests to some extent, but not necessarily someone I’ve met before.
Weis: Same for me. I felt like I could partake in the tradition.
2. Imam Monnoo ’28 & Jaelen Oh ’28
Oh: All my friends were doing it.
Monnoo: I live on West Campus, so it’s hard to meet people from East Campus — or meet people in general. I just wanted to see who I would get matched with in the area.
3. Hailey Ramzan ’27 & Hakeem Shindy ’27
Ramzan: I just thought it would be fun! I know a lot of people that made new friends [from Marriage Pact]. Last year my Marriage Pact never accepted my follower [request]…I was like, “Oh, I’ll try it again this year.”
Shindy: [I participated] just for funsies.
Ramzan: For sillies!
Shindy: Yeah. It’s exciting to see who this algorithm thinks you’re compatible with to be a friend.…or more.
4. Sophia Bonanno ’28 & Santana Romero ’28
Romero: I wasn’t expecting anything serious [from] it.
Bonanno: Yeah, same. I just wanted to do it for the vibe.
5. Sidh Shroff ’28 & Leo Melton ’28
Melton: I was like, why not? I mean, I could get a relationship, a friend, whatever.
Shroff: It could be super good. You never know.
TSD: How did waiting for your match feel?
1. Sridhar & Weis
Sridhar: It was interesting. I liked the little teasers they gave us. People were talking about it a lot — [it] added to this sort of buzz about it.
Weis: It was a fun time.
2. Monnoo & Oh
Oh: I actually missed the [email with my match’s initials] because I [filled out the Pact] a little late. [Another email said] she was an English major, and I’m really involved in English stuff. That was pretty cool to see.
Monnoo: I had a different [set of] initials. I had H.C. first, and then [it] did not turn out to be H.C. I didn’t really care. It was fun to see the updates come in. I know everyone around me was kind of going crazy, and they were looking [their matches] up on the Stanford Directory. I wanted it to be a surprise.
3. Ramzan & Shindy
Ramzan: I honestly forgot I filled it out. I’ve had the most busy, insane, stressful week of my life. I just got the email, and I was like, “Oh, cool.”
Shindy: When they gave me a little bit of information, I was curious. But before then, I was just getting my butt kicked in class.
Ramzan: Damn.
4. Bonanno & Romero
Romero: I think some people were really hyperfixated on figuring out who their initials were, who the major was. I understand that, because it’s a really fun tradition. But for me, I don’t know. It was low stress. I just knew it’d be a fun way to make a friend.
Bonanno: I wasn’t that invested.
5. Shroff & Melton
Shroff: Hella stalking. I was stalking Instagram.
Melton: There was the GitHub that showed initials and names that matched up. I was looking [at] that, like, “Oh, maybe I can figure out who it [is].” It was kind of fun. It added a bit of drama.
TSD: How did you present yourself on the Marriage Pact? Do you think you two are compatible?
1. Sridhar & Weis
Sridhar: To be really honest with you, I don’t remember a lot of what was on there. Some of the questions were quite odd, but [I] just tried to be honest about it. A lot of people were not taking it too seriously. I don’t think I was either.
Weis: I had a fun time filling it out. I filled it out with some friends and I got a good laugh out of it.
2. Monnoo & Oh
Oh: I have a girlfriend.
[laughter]
3. Ramzan & Shindy
Shindy: To clear things up, we’ve spoken like twice [before matching]. But Hailey’s cool. I’d like to think I’m cool.
Ramzan: Yeah, Hakeem’s so cool. Go Marriage Pact! I’m very glad I got him, and not someone that was not sweet [or] fun. Some of the matches are actually insane. It’s like, “How…um…”
Shindy: It’s hard to see the vision sometimes. I presented myself as honestly as I could. There were some questions that made me a little uncomfortable. For those I just put 4, because that was [the middle of the sliding scale]. I don’t know if they need to know all that.
4. Bonanno & Romero
Romero: We get along so well. And we have friends in common —
Bonanno: Yeah.
Romero: —which I feel like is a testament.
5. Shroff & Melton
Melton: I was pretty honest on the marriage pact. It didn’t go into that much detail, so I was pleasantly surprised. We have a lot of common interests…I think we clicked really well.
Schroff: Yeah. I don’t know [what] the algorithm is, but it’s doing a good job.
TSD: Is meeting your Marriage Pact match an awkward experience?
1. Sridhar & Weis
Sridhar: Definitely when it’s so orchestrated. Like, I’m sure if I met [Weis] under normal circumstances, it’d be fine and everything. But I’m like, “Ah, it’s the Marriage Pact…” Look, it’s okay. It’s not like I’m dying.
Weis: That’s good.
2. Monnoo & Oh
Oh: We haven’t really had a chance to talk. It’s a friendly thing.
3. Ramzan & Shindy
Ramzan: If you go into it having this expectation like “Oh my God, this is the love of my life,” then maybe. I think it’s just a cool way to meet new people.
Shindy: To add onto what Hailey’s saying, it’s when there’s different ideas of expectations — when one person is doing it just for fun, and the other isn’t — that’s when it can get awkward.
4. Bonanno & Romero
Romero: We both went into it with very low stakes, low commitment. I think it’s been really fun.
5. Shroff & Melton
Shroff: It’s fun. Get out; get to know people. You never know what comes out of it.
Melton: At first, I was like, “I don’t know what to say.” But I feel like the event at On-Call gave me a good reason to start a conversation.
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So was this year’s Stanford Marriage Pact successful? Only time will tell. As the Pact itself stated, “an algorithm is not the hand of god.” While a questionnaire can help discern compatibility, it can’t accommodate every student’s ideal vision of romance.
But who knows? The Daily will check back in a decade or two. Maybe by then, a few of these Cardinal couples will be living out a picket-fence dream.