What Is the Rice Purity Test?
The Rice Purity Test is a 100-question, self-graded survey that turns a person's life experiences into a single score between 0 and 100. The questions run from holding hands to the far end of human mischief; you check the ones that apply to you, subtract the total from 100, and that is your score. It was born at Rice University in the 1920s as a student icebreaker, and a century later it is one of the most-taken quizzes on the internet. Take it here if you would rather experience it than read about it.
Where it came from: the Rice Thresher, 1924
The first purity test appeared in The Rice Thresher, the student newspaper of Rice University in Houston, on 7 March 1924. It was a short, informal survey — ten questions, answered by 119 female undergraduates — with prompts such as whether they had ever been drunk, or done anything they would not tell their mother. The results ran under the headline “Rice Girls Not Quite Half Bad”, and the respondents' average score was 62. The idea caught on: purity tests became a recurring Thresher feature, usually on its satirical Backpage, and the list kept growing with each generation of students — reaching 150 questions in 1988. Folklorists were documenting campus purity tests as a folk tradition by the 1970s.
The version the internet knows was settled much later. After versions circulated online from the 1990s onward, Thresher editors produced an edited, modernised list in 2012 — 100 questions, updated for texting, video chat and modern campus life — and that is the standard form reproduced on this site. The longer history is summarised at Wikipedia's article on the purity test.
How the Rice Purity Test works
The mechanics are deliberately trivial. Start at 100. Work down the list of 100 questions and check every experience that applies to you — there is no time limit and no trick wording. Each checked item subtracts one point; nothing is weighted, so a first kiss and the final question cost the same. Your score is what remains. Traditionally the number is then read against a set of score bands — from the near-perfect 100–98 down to the single digits — which our score meaning guide explains band by band, and compared against the averages other people actually get.
What the test was always for is the social part: it was designed as an Orientation Week bonding ritual, a way for new students to compare notes and laugh at the gap between the most and least experienced people in the room. That is still its real use — in dorm rooms, group chats and the periodic waves of score-sharing that sweep TikTok and Reddit. Read as a measurement it is nonsense; read as a century-old party game with a scoreboard, it is close to perfect.
More questions, answered
What is a Rice Purity Test, in one sentence?
It is a self-graded list of 100 yes-or-no questions about life experiences — romance, sex, alcohol, drugs and trouble with authority — where your score is 100 minus the number of questions you answer yes to.
How does the Rice Purity Test work?
You read the 100 questions in order and mark every experience that applies to you. Each mark costs one point from a starting score of 100, with no weighting. The result is a single number between 0 and 100, which you can read against the traditional score bands or compare with friends.
Where did the Rice Purity Test come from?
From Rice University in Houston, Texas. Its student newspaper, The Rice Thresher, published the first purity survey in March 1924 — ten questions answered by 119 female undergraduates, reported under the headline "Rice Girls Not Quite Half Bad" — and the Thresher kept revising it for decades, expanding it to 150 questions in 1988 before its editors settled the modern 100-question version in 2012.
Is the Rice Purity Test official or scientific?
Neither. It was written by students as an Orientation Week icebreaker, it has never been a scientific instrument, and no university body endorses the versions circulating online today — including this one. It survives because it is a good conversation, not because it measures anything precisely.