Introduction: Marriage is one of the effective factors in the mental health and individuals life styles which its role in reducing personal and social disruptions has been acknowledged. In order to plan properly and increase youth’s awareness of right marital criteria, get to know their viewpoint is necessary. The study aimed at assessing single students’ marital criteria in Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, 2006. Methods: Using descriptive- analytic study method, 380 unmarried male and female students were selected through systematic random sampling. The data were collected using a questionnaire consisting demographic characteristics and marriage criteria, on a 3-point rating scale from very important, till important to some extent. All statistics were computed by the SPSS software data, using X2 test.

Results: Most of the participants were female, ranging in age from 18 to 23 years. The students, mostly (46.7%) were studying in 1-4th semesters. In general, the participant had positive attitude to marriage. Variables like age, sex and level of education were significantly correlated with spouse selection criteria like mutual understanding, faithfulness, beauty and attractiveness, parents’ agreements, love, education similarities, having same religion, having same taste, and not having heritable disease in the family.

Conclusion: The study revealed the valuable criteria for the male students as mutual understanding, faithfulness, being responsible, beauty and attractiveness and knowing each other before marriage. The valuable criteria for female student were mutual understanding, faithfulness, parent’s agreement, knowing each other before marriage, love, being responsible, beauty and attractiveness. Youth marriage should be facilitated by providing financial supports and more protection, knowing their viewpoints.