A quiz made in 1924 for college freshmen somehow broke TikTok in 2020. What started as a college tradition has now become one of the internet’s most famous rites of passage.
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Your Score
Start at 100. Each “yes” subtracts a point.
The scoring couldn't be simpler. Here's how your final score is calculated:
You start with a perfect score of 100
Every question you answer "yes" to subtracts one point
At the end of 100 questions, your remaining number is your purity score
The 100 questions span six broad categories covering everything from your earliest romantic memories to choices that might make you pause before ticking the box:
Holding hands, first kiss, dating, long-term relationships. These are the most universally relatable questions and rarely surprise anyone.
This section ranges from early experiences to more explicit territory. It accounts for most of the variation between people's scores.
Alcohol (being drunk once, regularly, at parties), cannabis, and harder substances.
Trespassing, shoplifting, cheating on exams, police contact.
Academic probation, getting fired, skipping class regularly.
The most famous is "Have you ever danced without leaving room for Jesus?" — a reference to old conservative school dance rules.
The test is best suited for people 17 and older. The question content involves adult themes, relationships, substances, and legal situations and isn’t appropriate for younger audiences.
People come to this test from very different places:
They heard about it and want to see their number
Taking it with friends and comparing results
Looking back at how their experiences have stacked up
It's genuinely funny in a group setting
College students during orientation season are the biggest audience. But adults in their late 20s and 30s regularly retake it for nostalgia — to compare who they were versus who they are now.
The standard online version requires no account, no email, and no sign-up.Your answers are processed within your browser. Nothing is tied to your identity. The only data typically collected is anonymous, aggregate usage stats (like overall score distribution) — not individual answers.
Yes, as many times as you want. There’s no limit, no cooldown, and no record of previous attempts. Just go back to the test page and start from question 1.
Many people retake it after a year or two to see how their score has changed.
No. The test was never designed to be a clinical assessment, a psychological measure, or a moral evaluation.It’s a self-graded entertainment quiz. Two people with nearly identical life histories could score differently based on how they interpret a question. The test was built for reflection and conversation, not diagnosis.
Honestly, three things clicked at exactly the right time, and the pandemic had everything to do with it.
A number between 0 and 100 needs zero explanation. Everyone instantly understands the scale. That kind of frictionless comparison is rare for something as personal as life experience.
People filmed themselves reacting to questions in real time. The escalation of topics — from mild to very personal — created natural dramatic tension in under 60 seconds.
In April 2020, millions of college students were sent home from campus with nothing but their phones. Social comparison went into overdrive. The test gave people a structured way to connect with friends remotely.
By late 2020, the hashtag #RicePurityTest had accumulated hundreds of millions of views. The Netflix show Big Mouth dedicated an episode to it in 2022, introducing it to a whole new audience who’d never heard of Rice University.
Not necessarily; a high score just means fewer of the listed experiences apply to you, which could reflect your age, your upbringing, your values, or simply the life you’ve chosen. There’s no universal right answer here. The test was built for reflection and conversation, not to rank people against each other.
It’s named after Rice University in Houston, Texas, not the food. That’s where it originated in 1924.
No. Rice University acknowledges the test’s history but doesn’t maintain, endorse, or profit from any version available online today.
Absolutely. Many couples take it together and compare scores. It tends to generate honest, surprisingly revealing conversations.
The test is a quiz that measures life experiences; it doesn’t advocate any particular values. Purity culture is a set of social or religious beliefs about sexual behavior. The two are unrelated, despite sharing the word “purity.”
