Hafzah Mueenuddin, a Pakistani Muslim in the six-year medical program, agrees that compatibility with her family will be important when she chooses a spouse.

"That's a big part of whomever I'm going to meet and get married with," Muenuddin says. "My parents have to agree with him for me to agree with him. That's just the way it is. It's not so much like I'm out to please my parents, it's just that I know in the long run that will be better for me because that's usually the way things turn out."

She says arrangement can be easier.

"Not having an arranged marriage just leaves you out there to pick your own person," she says. "To me, the benefits just have to be things like your parents approve of it, and their parents approve of it, and I guess the weeding out process is easier if you share it with somebody else."

Jeyavarna Karthikeyan, an Indian Hindu in the six-year medical program, says letting her parents decide will take some of the pressure off her.

"I think I will pretty much give it all to my parents," she says, laughing. "I told them, 'It's all your responsibility. If I don't like him, it's going to be your fault.'"

Because she intends to have an arranged marriage, she says she is not concerned with dating protocols.

"I'm all for arranged marriages because I think it just provides so much more security in life," Karthikeyan says. "You don't have to be worrying about how you look every day. Americans are forced to look good because they never know when they're going to meet the right person. Our parents are the ones who are going to be looking for us, so it doesn't matter."

Vinay Bhardwaj says she has observed arranged marriages as well as love marriages break up.

"We can't tell our children to marry Indians because the marriages are more stable," she says, adding divorces do happen under both systems, but exact figures are not available. "People don't report it because of shame."

Surinder Bhardwaj says the method of arranging marriages can vary with culture, geographic location, time and circumstances of each family.

He says arranged marriages have followed two basic patterns in India. Village exogamy requires marriage between people of different villages, which is more common in northern India. These people will most likely not know each other before the wedding. Village endogamy calls for the marriage of individuals belonging to the same village, a practice more common in southern India.