The Dating Challenges of a College Student in NYC

It's pretty interesting to see how young people today, particularly college students, date in New York City. They must make important decisions because they are the ones who will guide society in the upcoming generation. On the other hand, courting, dating, and marriage have changed over time. These days, the topics that surround young people are frequently sex-focused (Glenn & Marquardt, 2001). By the time these young people arrive in college, they have learned everything there is to know about sex. Many Americans enrolled in various higher education schools engage in sexual activity without committing to a relationship. No longer is it something that is considered unusual. 'Hooking up' as the youths call it, is a widely carried out practice in most campuses presently (Birger, 2015). Young adults get physically involved with each other without any commitment or any feeling of affection or connection towards the other individual. Most women in these institutions have restrictive standards when it comes to sexual interactions. A more significant number of these girls grew up in conservative and religious families. Still, they engage in sex without undergoing the traditional dating procedure.
Every weekend after midnight, groups of sorority ladies attending various colleges and universities squeeze themselves in basement bars. I once even had a group singing out loud to Taylor Swift's lyrics of one of her heartache anthem. These girls splash themselves with beer as they joke around to keep each other informed. Yes, it is a night out and is expected to be fun and enjoyable. Everything is usually at their disposal. The only thing missing is the presence of guys. It is a typical night out for most college students in New York City especially girls (Glenn & Marquardt, 2001). It is because more girls get enrolled in the campus as compared to boys. Most youths seek to find love while still on campus, and because the number of men is lower than females, they have to fight for the few available men. Some faculties in these institutions get also dominated by students of a specific gender. It makes it difficult for them to interact with persons of the opposite sex and date to be able to find long-life partners. In fact, most youths nowadays prefer to see their spouses online using the available dating sites or other social media platforms (Steinberg, 2011). Most institutions of higher learning have a gender imbalance and are specific gender dominated making it difficult for most college students in NYC to date efficiently or get into romantic relationships while on the campus.
Literature Review
The American Council on Education conducted a recent research on the percentage of boys and girls getting enrolled in colleges since 2000. The study established that more women attended universities and institutions of higher learning than men. Ladies were about 57% leaving the guys to fight for the remaining 43% (Birger, 2015). The reasons behind this conclusion being that girls score higher grades than boys. Also, regarding quitting school, the number of male students who drop out before completing their studies is increasingly alarming. The male child is given responsibilities at an early stage in life. Some even have to work to pay their tuition fees, unlike the females who get handled with care by their parents, siblings and the whole society in general. More girls get enrolled primarily from the black community, the low-income and less-privileged in the organization as well Hispanic students. It is because the men in these societies are busy getting involved in work to sustain their families or even drug and substance abuse where they feel not considered.
Norval Glenn and Elizabeth Marquadt (2001) carried out an investigation to determine the values upheld and attitude by female students attending college and universities in New York towards dating, courtship, and marriages. The research involved eleven campuses. They conducted interviews to sixty-two of the women attending different colleges. It was just a representative sample. In total, 1000 women attending institutions of higher learning participated in the national survey. The findings were that women would like to meet their spouses while still at the campus and end up getting married to them after that. However, the fact that the number of women attending college outnumbers men makes the ratio imbalanced. This among other aspects makes it difficult for college women to meet the individuals they would like to spend the rest of their lives within universities. Also, nowadays, young adults want to physically get involved with each other without any form of commitment. Finally, those women who grew up with single parents or in divorced family setups had a different perception on marriage, commitment and hooking up compared to those who got nurtured by the love of both parents (Glenn & Marquardt, 2001).
Niche.com ranked thirty-five private and public colleges according to the ratio of women to men attending the university (Birger, 2015). The site is college reviewed and is penned by university students. In New York University alone, 61% of the students are females with only 39%of them being men. For Boston University, the institution has 62% ladies enrolled to undertake various courses. James Madison University accommodates 63% women with 37% of the students being men. Even in Baylor University which is a Christian based school, there are more women than men (Birger, 2015). The higher number of women has a significant impact on college dating even in such principled institutions. The same girls that randomly hook up with their classmates on Friday go to church the following Sunday. The gender imbalance in these organizations promotes the idea of hooking up and casual sex. Traditional dating is now an idea of the past generation.
There is a common assumption by parents that girls will excel academically in single-sex schools or institutions dominated by females as compared to boys in such scenarios. According to research conducted by the London Institute of Education (LOE), this might, in fact, be true. That is why most parents prefer to take their daughters to institutions that are more female oriented. Girls who get to attend ladies schools strictly tend to earn more in future as compared to those who went to mixed schools. It seems to have a positive impact on ladies, yet the same concept has an adverse social effect on the young boys. For boys, parents are not keen to take them to gender-specific schools since they are considered to be the more dominating sex in the society (Birger, 2015). They attend mixed schools almost all their life from kindergarten all the way to campus. All the attention get shifted to girls who are considered vulnerable in the society and get handled with lots of care.
Stephanie Steinberg (2011) looked at a case of Michelle Przybyksi aged 26 and Andy Lalinde, 33 who started off their romance by meeting via an exclusive online website for campus students. She covered the unique feature on CNN. These two might have met severally in college but were not that keen to notice each other. One day Andy was looking at a website, Datemyschool.com and came across Michelle's profile while scrolling down through images of beautiful ladies in their school who were online. She was standing in some place in South America. On opening her profile, Andy saw all the details of Michelle including the fact that she was a twenty-six old nursing student and that she lived not far from his block. Andy proclaimed his love for nurses and clicked the hit button and sent the message. They dated twice; once meeting in the library and the second time walking around campus with Andy's dog (Steinberg, 2011). They were both graduate students at Columbia University. Funny enough, after ten days of knowing each other, their friends encouraged them to get into something more serious. They requested for a certificate of marriage in New York. On April 29th, 2011, the couple exchanged vows. A relationship that began as a meeting on an online website by two college students ended up in a marriage and long-lasting commitment (Steinberg, 2011).


Methodology
The research got conducted by a group of 100 students attending various colleges and universities. It was a convenience sample. The participants were aged 18-25yearsold. They got provided with a twelve question survey, distributed via Google forms. It was posted on the official Facebook pages of various colleges considering the impact of social media today. Being one of the most popular platforms used by the youth, it would quickly reach the targeted group of individuals. All individuals' responses were confidential and therefore anonymous unless a student left an email for follow-up questions.
Measures
Personal details: Names, age, gender and ethnicity
The college/university they attended
Relationship and dating history: How many times they hooked up and whether they are in serious relationships presently.
Dating habits and preferences description;Qualities considered when looking for a spouse like the level of education, career or personality.
Dating sites motivation: List of online services they have used, the reasons behind the choice to look for a partner online.
Discussion
Unequal Gender Ratio in Colleges in NYC
The ratio of women to men was 57: 43 among students who graduated from different courses in 2013. The number of girls qualifying for enrolment in good universities is expected to rise even in the coming years (Birger, 2015). It gets attributed to the fact that girls take academics more seriously and that they get better grades than the boys in the previous institutions to warrant them to be in these institutions of higher learning. The community also treats the girl child as the weaker gender. Therefore, families concentrate on empowering the girl child and forget about their sons. Most parents take their daughters to gender-specific schools for them to have minimal interaction with people of the opposite sex. They think that boys do not need to get handled with care like the girls. The men are also given responsibilities much earlier in life than the women. A young man is expected to be living alone at a certain age, but for the girls, they can stay with their parents until even in their late thirties. They are forced to get jobs, be it full time or part time early in life. That is why presently, some degrees considered to be male-dominated are beginning to have more women getting enrolled. Such fields include medicine and engineering which got regarded as masculine in the traditional society. Looking at the number of school dropouts, the males who do not complete their studies are more than the females. Finally, when enrolling students in colleges, the girls get favor from the education system (Glenn & Marquardt, 2001). The cut off marks for the female students is usually lower than that of the male individuals. All these contribute to the fact that more colleges and universities are reporting to have a gender imbalance in their schools with girls being more than boys.
When enrolling on campus, a teenager considers several factors while deciding which college is the most suitable for them to attend to attain their undergraduate or postgraduate degree successfully. Some look at the nationwide reputation of the school and how it is ranked compared to others. Others consider the Internet and Wi-Fi connection because the world is now more about social media communication and application of other advanced technologies. Various students might opt for universities which prosper in co-curricular activities like games, sports, and entertainment. It is essential for parents and their kids also to consider the gender ratio in these institutions. The best parameter one can use to measure whether the form of dating in a school gets geared towards the traditional relationships or hook-ups with no commitment would be the ratio of men to women in the campus. In most colleges and universities, boys are being outpaced by the girls in enrolling for courses (Steinberg, 2011). Being a male-dominated society, the society will emphasize that college students and other young adults should embrace commitment and monogamy in relationships (Birger, 2015). It would only be a suggestion if the males outnumbered the women in colleges. Now that it is the other way round, and that girls are more than the boys in campuses and these women are desperately seeking to find love while at school, the same concept does not even get mentioned. Hook-ups are on the rise because men in institutions are aware of the fact that they are less and more girls are out there looking for boyfriends (Steinberg, 2011). Instead of valuing and appreciating them, they treat them as sex objects. Men do not suffer as much as the girls do when it comes to romantic relationships and finding a spouse on the campus. That is why dating in NYC is not easy especially for a female college student (Glenn& Marquardt, 2001).
Online Dating
Nowadays students have to work as they study to be able to pay for their tuition. Others get so engaged in academics that they have little time to interact with people of the opposite sex and start up a romantic relationship. They have to balance between classwork, part-time jobs, hanging out with their friends and meeting with groups for discussion of assignments. Lucky for these college students, many dating sites have been introduced to ease the whole process of courtship and commitment (Steinberg, 2011). In most schools, there are more ladies than men attending the same degree programs. The ratio of men to women is imbalanced. Female students have to look for love via the Internet (Birger, 2015). They interact with people on various social media platforms in a bid to find responsible spouses. The introduction of hookups in colleges also makes young men and women in campuses to opt for online dating (Glenn &Marquardt, 2001).
Institutions of higher learning get divided into various faculties. Some have more females than males getting enrolled and vice versa. A nursing, tourism or fashion class will have more girls. Schools offering engineering, computer science, medicine, and architecture are likely to have more boys. They do not frequently interact with individuals of the opposite sex throughout their course. Through online dating, they can be able to meet new people and even start a romantic relationship which could lead to a long life commitment. Some college students are introverts and prefer to keep to themselves. Others are too shy to approach people of the other gender face to face. Meeting with individuals through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or other online dating sites would be the best way for them to find love. There are also some students who forget that life is not all about books and get too focused on homework and campus activities and forget to create time for socializing. The top sites for college students include Date My School, Campus Hook, University Love Connection and College Passions (Steinberg, 2011). Online dating would be the most appropriate method to get a date while on the campus. All in all, one should take precautions while meeting with a person you have met via the website for the first few times until you are sure you know the person very well. Let a close friend know your exact location and text them frequently to keep them updated (Steinberg, 2011).
Conclusion
The dating experience for a college student has proven to be more difficult than the real act of studying (Glenn & Marquardt, 2001). Various researchers have shown that more girls are getting enrolled in universities than boys. Hence, it makes it difficult for young women in college to find love while on campus. The emergence of a new sexual paradigm has made casual sex replace traditional dating with no commitments whatsoever among college students (Birger, 2015). The men take advantage of the impending situation and use this opportunity to take advantage of girls through hook-ups. When a campus girl is expecting commitment and a long-lasting relationship which would lead to marriage, a boy is already thinking about how to get the next girl. Also, online dating is steadily replacing the traditional ways of courtship and commitment (Steinberg, 2011). It is because the Internet is getting more and more vital for youths to survive. In institutions with specific gender domination, dating habits tend to be poor especially if men are more than women. It is evident that a student not only has to struggle with academics on campus but also getting a date is complicated. The gender imbalance in colleges gives room for hookups instead of encouraging proper dating habits (Birger, 2015). College students should still embrace the traditional procedure of dating. Finally, online dating could be the best appropriate method for a college student to find love nowadays.

References
Birger,J. (2015).UnequalGender Ratios at Colleges are Driving Hook up Culture. Money,
TimesInc. Retrieved from
http://time.com/money/4072951/college-gender-ratios-dating-hook-up-culture/
Glenn, N. & Marquardt, E. (2001). Hooking up, Hanging out, and hoping for Mr Right:
College Women on Dating and Mating Today. Institute for American Values,
1841Broadway, Suite 211, New York 10023.pdf.
Steinberg S. (2011). New Dating Site Helps College Students find Love. Best in Life.
Retrieved from edition.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/06/22/date.myschool/index.html.