How it started at Rice
Rice University in Houston, Texas created the original Rice Purity Test in 1924, published through the Rice Thresher — the campus newspaper. The original purpose was specific: give incoming freshmen during Orientation Week a structured, voluntary way to talk about their pre-college life experiences. The test served as an icebreaker, a bonding tool, and a way for new students to mark a transition from high school to college.
Over the decades, the format spread to other universities. Variations appeared at Berkeley, UCLA, Duke, and dozens of other campuses. The question set evolved, modernized, expanded — but the fundamental format stayed the same: 100 yes-or-no questions, one point subtracted for each "yes," final score between 0 and 100. The version most students take today is roughly an 80% match to the official Rice version, with regional and generational variations.
Average scores in college
For the 18–24 age group, the average Rice Purity Test score is around 80. First-year students tend to score higher, then scores typically decline over the four college years as students accumulate experiences. These figures describe a general pattern rather than precise measured values.
Scores tend to run lower among college-age test-takers than the global average, for a simple reason: the college years are when many people first encounter a lot of the experiences the test catalogues. This is a pattern about age and life stage, not a judgment about any school, group, or activity. We don't have reliable data on how scores differ by school type or by involvement in specific campus activities, so we don't claim any.
How it actually gets taken on campus
The most common scenario isn't a solo experience. It's a group of freshmen during Orientation Week or the first month of school, sitting in a common room or dorm lounge, taking the test together. One person usually reads the questions out loud while everyone else tracks their own number quietly. The reveals at the end produce most of the memorable moments — and most of the friendships, since the conversations sparked by score gaps tend to run for hours.
The Rice Thresher itself maintains the official version of the test and runs an associated Instagram account where students share their scores. The unofficial culture around the test is broader: TikTok videos of students reacting to specific questions, group-chat comparison threads, and date-comparison rituals where new couples take it together as a get-to-know-you exercise.
Taking it as a freshman vs. as a senior
If you take the test as a freshman in your first weeks of college, your score will be a snapshot of pre-college life. Take it again at the end of senior year and the gap between the two numbers becomes the more interesting data point than either score on its own. That gap — typically 8–15 points — is what the test was originally designed to measure: the maturation of experiences across the four years that define traditional college life.
If you're somewhere in the middle, the test is a useful waypoint. It's not designed to predict where your senior-year score will land. It's just a number reflecting where you are right now, on the specific list of experiences that 1924-era Rice students decided were worth tracking — plus the modernizations that have accumulated since.