True love on campus: Cupid is alive and well at University of Reading

By JI-MIN LEE jlee@rdg.today

UNIVERSITY relationships can be fleeting, but students at Reading are proving that true love still outs – for a year at least.

With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, a survey has revealed that 81.3% of those who met a romantic partner at Reading enjoyed a relationship of over one year, the highest rate of the UK’s top 30 universities.

The Knowledge Academy asked 3,500 current and former students about the nature of their university romances, documenting the lengths of relationships and whether they led to marriage or children.

Despite enjoying admirable longevity once in a relationship, only 13.2% of Reading students met a romantic partner during their time at university, well below the 35.6% national average.

Only in Glasgow and Aberdeen did love prove harder to come by.

York proved to be the UK’s city of love, with 63.3% of students saying they had met a romantic partner there. Manchester, Bristol, Leeds and Southampton completed the top five.

Two Reading alumni who didn’t struggle to find their special someone on campus were Hazel and Andrew Coleman, whose relationship has prevailed since meeting at the freshers’ disco on their very first night on campus in 1973.

Hazel said: “Andrew was in Mansfield Hall studying Psychology and I was in Bridges studying English. We didn’t go out with each other for ages, but it felt inevitable, somehow.

“We moved in together in our second year, quite shocking to our parents at that time, and married in 1977. I had polio as a child, and am quite severely disabled now. Andrew has been the most wonderful partner, caring for me and making me laugh for most of my life.”

According to the study, the likelihood of marrying a university partner is relatively low, with 12.2% revealing they tied the knot with their university love.

Only 11.6% of those who met someone at Reading went on to marry that person, with 8.3% having children together.

Queen’s University Belfast proved the most successful in converting university romances into marriages, with just over one fifth of participants marrying someone they’d met