100–98 — Practically untouched
Almost nothing on the list has happened yet — not even, in most cases, a first kiss. Scores up here are common for younger teenagers and genuinely rare for adults.
Rice Purity Score Meaning: What Your Score Actually Says
Your Rice Purity score is the number of questions on the 100-item test that you did not check: start at 100, lose one point per experience. The score meaning, though, is not in the arithmetic — it is in the band your number lands in. Below is the full set of bands used with the standard test, each explained in plain language. If you have not taken it yet, take the Rice Purity Test first and come back with your number.
Every Rice Purity score band, explained
97–94 — Barely started
A hand held, a date or two, perhaps a first kiss — and that is about it. The list has barely begun, which is exactly where most people start out.
93–90 — Innocent, with footnotes
The romantic basics are covered — dating, kissing, maybe a relationship — but nothing on the list has gone much further than that.
89–85 — Mostly innocent
A normal early-experience profile: some romance, some kissing, perhaps a sip of alcohol at a family occasion. This is roughly where published averages for under-25s sit.
84–80 — Gently experienced
The list is starting to fill in — a relationship or two, some drinking, a few stories — while the heavier sections remain mostly blank.
79–70 — Evenly lived
A balanced mix: real romantic experience, a social life with alcohol in it, and the first entries from the wilder pages of the list.
69–60 — Right around average
This is the band the published overall averages fall into. A sexually and socially active life, some rule-bending, and plenty of boxes still unticked further down.
59–45 — Properly experienced
Most of the mainstream list is checked: relationships, sex, drinking, maybe a brush with authority. Only the genuinely extreme items are likely to be missing.
44–25 — Deeply experienced
Well over half the list is lived experience, including a good share of the items most people never reach. Scores here usually belong to older or notably adventurous takers.
24–10 — Almost everything
Only a handful of items remain unchecked, and they tend to be the ones involving courts, consequences or the far end of the list. A very unusual result.
9–0 — The full list
Essentially the entire test, end to end. Single-digit scores are vanishingly rare and usually mean either a remarkable life or a very generous interpretation of the questions.
How to read your score honestly
Three things keep a Rice Purity score in perspective. First, age: the list is a running total of a lifetime, so scores drift downward as the years pass — published averages by age, collected on our average Rice Purity score page, show exactly that pattern. Second, weighting: every item costs one point, so a score says how many listed things you have done, never how significant any of them were. Third, honesty: the test is self-graded and anonymous, so the only score it can really spoil is your own comparison with friends.
Curious which sections of the list your score came from? The checker on our homepage breaks every result down by category — romance, sex, alcohol, smoking and drugs, rules and the law, and wild behavior — so two people with the same score can see how differently they got there. You can also read the full list of questions to see exactly what each point cost.
Score meaning questions
What is a good Rice Purity score?
There is no good or bad score. The number only counts how many of the test's 100 listed experiences you have had. A high score is not a virtue and a low score is not a failing — a 22-year-old and a 45-year-old are expected to land in very different places simply because one has had more years to live in.
Is a higher or lower Rice Purity score better?
Neither. The test was designed in 1924 as an icebreaker, and the fun is in comparing scores with friends, not in winning. If anything, most people retake it over the years precisely to watch their own score drift downward as life happens.
What Rice Purity score do most people get?
Published overall averages sit in the low-to-mid 60s, which lands in the 69–60 band on this page. Averages for younger takers are much higher — published figures for under-25s sit in the mid-80s — because fewer of the listed experiences have had time to happen.
Can a Rice Purity score be 0 or 100?
Both are possible in principle and rare in practice. A 100 means not one of the 100 items applies — including holding hands romantically. A 0 means every single item applies, including the test's most extreme final questions, so genuine zeros are almost unheard of.
Why do the score bands get wider lower down?
Because the distribution of real scores is not even. Almost everybody checks the first handful of romantic items, so the top of the scale needs fine bands to say anything useful; far fewer people reach the bottom items, so the lower bands group wider ranges together.