Why Yes, I'd Love to Marry You, But Could I First See a Copy of Your SAT Scores?

Citing a report about a British study of IQs and marriage rates that concludes that smart women have trouble getting themselves married off, Ann Althouse (a university of Michigan law professor who writes an entertaining and interesting blog) posted her own thoughts on the real losers in the marriage sweepstakes.

The most unmarriageable folks, in her (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) view? Stupid men, whose intellectual equals have been scooped up by men looking for women just a bit inferior to them, and whose intellectual betters won't give them the time of day, because women really aren't looking for men who are dumber than they are.

Althouse has a couple of fun follow-up posts on the subject here and here.

My own experience during my pre-marriage years was that the smarter the circle of people in which I found myself, the better my dating prospects became. High school was fine but retrospectively somewhat meh, college was an improvement, and law school was the dating jackpot, culminating in the gloriously happy relationship that would ultimately make me Mrs. Metropolitan. I couldn't tell you whether this upward trend was the actual result of being surrounded by smarter guys who were more inclined to date smart girls, or whether it's just a happy coincidence tied to the fact that my hair got progressively cuter after high school, hitting a peak of maximum cuteness during law school.

(And, incidentally, Mr. Metropolitan's SAT scores were 50 points higher than mine, a fact that he likes to mention at opportune moments.)