The-enemies-to-lovers trope has dominated the current era of young adult novels, in which former enemies realize their affection for each other and fall deeply in love. Contemporary culture has also specifically capitalized on forbidden love between college enemies, in online novels and in country music which appeals to listeners with deep-seated college allegiances. Conner Smith’s “Orange and White” details a University of Tennessee student falling in love with a girl from the University of Georgia. Megan Moroney’s “Tennessee Orange” features a student at the University of Georgia who is scared to bring her new beau home to her die-hard bulldog father because he reps Knoxville Orange.
Does the Harvard-Yale rivalry foster the same dynamic in romantic relationships between enemy students? The competitiveness that resurfaces every year for a single day shields the fact that the two schools boast very similar students with similar romantic interests.
The stories abound about couples where one person went to Harvard and the other to Yale. An analysis of the New York Times Wedding Announcement Archives reveals that the Harvard Pilgrims and the Yale Bulldogs have the highest marriage rates out of the eight Ivy League universities, with 546 stories detailed in the wedding announcements.
That Yalies and Harvardians find each other is unsurprising: the two schools, though sworn enemies, taut similar populations of extremely smart students who are standouts in their field of interests and poised to lead the next generation. These pupils, who may have even earned entrance into both institutions, are in search of meaningful conversations and find solace in partners who share similar intellectual interests and experiences. Indeed, computer science majors from both institutions take the same CS50 class taught by the immensely entertaining Professor David Malan. While they may yell names at each other one day a year, the truth is that Harvard and Yale friends take turns hosting each other in their dorms, making a pilgrimage on the Amtrak for a friendly reunion.
The second highest romantic pairing in the Ivy League is between Columbia and Yale: The Lions favor the Bulldogs 530 times over. Again, the cultures between the two schools are very similar, as the same students who chose to study in New Haven may have instead attended Columbia for its central location in New York City. The Lions get around, because 501 of them married graduates of Harvard—evidently, they like indulging their superiority complex and marrying within the Ivy League.
479 Lions have also pursued the Quakers of the University of Pennsylvania, possibly because their college campus on Morningside Heights is so similar to West Philadelphia—both are neighborhoods where gentrifying college campuses have pushed out local communities. Maybe it’s something in the New York water. The simplest answer is the New York bias of the New York Times Wedding announcement and the sheer number of Columbia affiliates who reside in the city. But the annual post-graduation migration to Murray Hill for Harvard, Penn, and Yale graduates cannot be overlooked.
While the Lions have the highest marriage rates with other colleges, their least-favored university is Brown, with 299 marriages. This is typical, considering these schools have the most opposing cultures. Brown is the typical liberal arts college, with an open curriculum and a reverence for freedom in curricula. By contrast, Columbia has a strict core curriculum, in which all students are mandated to read “the classics” and engage in structured conversations. With this cultural divide, it is not shocking that the Lions and Bears have the lowest marriage rates for Columbia graduates.
Representing the lowest inter-collegiate-marriage rates, the Kegs of Dartmouth struggle to find their life partners within the Ivy League. There are 66 marriages between Brown and Dartmouth couples and 66 between Cornell and Dartmouth, slightly more than the measly 62 marriages between Princeton and Dartmouth graduates. This may in part be due to sample size, as Dartmouth is the smallest school in the League, and to potential culture differences. Though generally preppy and Greek-life focused, Dartmouth’s culture encourages transcendental, anti-materialist experiences in the woods surrounding campus. Perhaps this creates some degree of a culture shock, as there are only 156 marriages between students at each school.
These rates pale in comparison to the number of people who found their spouses at the same institution. Columbia leads the pack in this data set, with its 3585 marriages attributed to the New York Times reporting bias, as many of its graduates remain in the city and submit their stories to these pages. Harvard lags behind, with 2925 marriages between its graduates. Third on the list is Penn, with 2,220 unions, followed by Yale with 1,870, Cornell with 1,514, Princeton with 1,295, Brown with 1,231, and Dartmouth with 628.
Dartmouth lags behind the others due to its smaller size, although one would expect that isolating kids in the rural hills of Hanover, New Hampshire would lead to closer relationships during college years. Maybe the prevalence of frat and drinking cultures leads to more hookups rather than committed relationships. Schools like Cornell and Penn, with a similar prevalence of Greek life and drinking culture and a higher percentage of students living off-campus, have relatively low rates considering their large sizes, suggesting that self-selection in living patterns may not be helpful in their search for a spouse. Brown and Princeton are relatively low on the list, considering that the majority of students live on campus for all four years in mixed-age houses. Harvard is considerably high on the list, so if you can’t find your spouse at the Game this weekend, hope to sit next to them in your next section.
To the “ring by spring” readers, have no fear this weekend: odds are you can find a spouse at Yale. Besides, turning an enemy into a lover is thrilling.
Carly Brail ’26 (carlybrail@college.harvar.edu) favors Tigers over Lions and Bears.
Instances of marriages between college graduates in the New York Times wedding announcement archives:
| Harvard | Yale | Princeton | Dartmouth | Penn | Brown | Cornell | Columbia | |
| Harvard | 2925 | 546 | 331 | 155 | 423 | 289 | 254 | 501 |
| Yale | 546 | 1870 | 199 | 101 | 286 | 163 | 178 | 530 |
| Princeton | 331 | 199 | 1295 | 62 | 210 | 122 | 130 | 337 |
| Dartmouth | 155 | 101 | 62 | 628 | 105 | 66 | 66 | 156 |
| Penn | 423 | 286 | 210 | 105 | 2220 | 171 | 232 | 479 |
| Brown | 289 | 163 | 122 | 66 | 171 | 1231 | 117 | 299 |
| Cornell | 254 | 178 | 130 | 66 | 232 | 117 | 1514 | 350 |
| Columbia | 501 | 530 | 337 | 156 | 479 | 299 | 350 | 3585 |