Rice Purity Test: The Complete Guide to Taking It, Scoring It, and Understanding What It Means

If you’ve spent any time on TikTok, Reddit, or in a college group chat lately, you’ve probably seen someone drop a random number (84, 62, maybe a suspicious 19) like it’s some kind of secret badge. That number is a rice purity score, and it comes from the rice purity test, a 100-question self-assessment.

It’s been a fixture of college life for decades and a full-blown internet phenomenon for the last several years.

This page breaks down exactly what the test is, where it came from, how the scoring actually works, and what your score says (and doesn’t say) about you. If you’re just here to run the numbers, our rice purity score checker below does the counting for you the moment you finish.

What Is the Rice Purity Test?

The rice purity test is a 100-item checklist covering everyday and not-so-everyday life experiences: things like dating, first kisses, relationships, partying, alcohol, minor rule-breaking, and more personal or intimate milestones. You go through the list and check off anything you’ve actually done.

At the end, your responses are added up to produce a single number between 0 and 100.

That number is your rice purity score. It’s not a personality type, an IQ score, or a moral rating. It’s simply a tally of how many items on the list apply to your life so far.

A rice purity score is meant to spark conversation and comparison, not to judge anyone.

The name itself confuses a lot of first-time visitors. It has nothing to do with cooking or grocery-store rice. “Rice” refers to Rice University in Houston, Texas, where the test got its start.

Where Did It Come From? The Origins of the Rice Purity Test

The First Version (1924)

Rice University’s own student newspaper, The Rice Thresher, is where the paper trail starts. On March 7, 1924, the Thresher published the results of an informal 10-question survey of 119 female undergraduates.

The questions were things like “Have you ever been drunk?” and “Have you ever done anything you wouldn’t tell your mother?” The average score among that first group was 62.

From 10 Questions to 100 (1974-2012)

The Thresher revisited the test periodically over the following decades: it resurfaced in a 1974 issue, then again around 1980. The format most people recognize today didn’t arrive until 1988.

That’s when the Thresher’s satirical “Backpage” section significantly expanded the list, replacing the earlier 10-question, 10-points-each version with a one-point-per-question format.

Quick honesty check: sources don’t fully agree on how big that 1988 expansion actually was. The Thresher’s own later reporting says 100 questions, while a couple of secondhand summaries claim 150. We’re going with the Thresher’s own account, since it’s the closer-to-the-source version.

That 1988 version also introduced the “MOS” (Member of the Opposite Sex) framing later updated to “MPS” (Member of the Preferred Sex) by 1998, when the newspaper also removed a handful of questions about sexual assault and child abuse that had been included in the late-1980s edition.

The version now treated as the standard test was put together in 2012 by Thresher Backpage editors, who rewrote the list specifically to address the bias and non-consensual content in earlier drafts.

That 2012 version is still hosted today at ricepurityscorechecker.com, which is run by the Thresher and displays the paper’s own logo. That makes it the closest thing the test has to an official home.

Two questions have survived, largely unchanged, from that original 1924 version all the way to today: “Have you ever cheated?” and “Have you ever been drunk?”

It Wasn’t Actually the First of Its Kind

Rice’s version, while the most famous, wasn’t actually the first purity test. Wikipedia’s documented history of the format traces similar informal surveys of student behavior to other American colleges even earlier.

Barnard College had one in 1935, and the University of Toronto had one in 1936. That makes “purity test” as a genre older than the Rice-specific version most people know today.

How It Spread Beyond Rice

O-Week (Rice’s orientation week) is where the test has always lived most naturally, taken by incoming students as an icebreaker with their orientation groups.

By 2017, according to Thresher reporting, the test’s webpage was drawing over 1.5 million visits a year. A single Dis-Orientation Saturday after O-Week generated roughly 274 completed tests in Houston alone, nearly triple a typical day.

From there it spread well beyond Rice, showing up at other universities and high schools, and eventually onto TikTok. One of the earliest documented viral moments came in October 2020, when a TikTok video of a creator having their family take the test racked up over 3 million plays.

The trend has kept resurfacing on TikTok, Reddit, and Instagram ever since. It has also inspired its own spinoffs: college-specific versions like the unofficial Berkeley Purity Test and Stanford Purity Test, and “The Innocence Test,” a 2020 spinoff created by two Pomona College students that went viral in its own right and was completed 1.4 million times in its first 24 hours online.

How Does the Rice Purity Score Work?

The scoring is intentionally simple, which is part of why the test has stuck around so long:

• You start with a perfect score of 100.
• Every question you check off (meaning you’ve had that experience) subtracts one point.
• Your final rice purity score is just 100 minus the number of boxes you checked.

So if you check off 22 items out of the 100 total, your score is 78. Check off 55, and you land on 45.

There’s no weighting involved: a minor item like “held hands with someone” counts exactly the same as a much more significant one. Every question is worth one point, full stop.

A higher score means fewer of the listed experiences, which the test frames as more “pure” or innocent. A lower score means more of the listed experiences.

A perfect 100 means you didn’t check anything at all; a 0 means every single item applied to you.

Taking it is just three steps:

1. Go through all 100 statements and check the ones that apply to your own life.
2. Once every question is answered, submit to calculate your score.
3. Your final number appears instantly on screen. That’s it. No manual math, no waiting. It’s exactly what a rice purity score checker is meant to do: take your answers and hand back a clean, ready-to-share number.

A quick note on terminology: if you take the test, you’ll run into the abbreviation MPS, which stands for “Member of the Preferred Sex.” It’s a deliberately inclusive way of referring to whoever someone is romantically or sexually interested in, regardless of orientation.

It replaced an earlier, more binary term (“MOS,” or “Member of the Opposite Sex”) used in the 1988 version, as part of the Thresher’s later effort to make the test less exclusionary.

What the 100 Questions Cover

The 100 questions are usually grouped into a handful of broad categories, generally arranged from milder, more common experiences early in the list toward more mature or less common ones later on. Typical categories include:

• Dating and relationships: first dates, holding hands, being in a relationship
• Physical and romantic intimacy: kissing, physical closeness, and more mature milestones
• Parties and social life: going to parties, staying out late, social risk-taking
• Alcohol and substances: drinking, related experiences
• Rule-breaking and minor mischief: small acts of dishonesty, breaking curfew, run-ins with authority
• Everyday personal milestones: things like traveling alone, working a job, or other general life experiences

Because the list runs from mild to more mature, most people end up somewhere in the middle rather than at either extreme. That’s a big part of why average scores tend to cluster in a similar range.

The Thresher’s own 2018 “State of the Pure” report backs this up at the individual-question level. The most commonly checked items were early, mild ones like holding hands (83% of respondents), going on a date (81%), and being in a relationship (77%).

The least commonly checked were items at the extreme end of the list, such as bestiality (2%) and incest (3%). That pattern, heavy check marks near the top of the list and almost none near the bottom, is exactly what you’d expect from a checklist ordered mild to extreme.

Rice Purity Score Chart: What Your Score Means

There’s no single “official” cutoff for each range, since the test was never a scientific instrument to begin with. That said, most versions of the test use roughly the same broad bands to describe what a score suggests:

A few things worth keeping in mind:

• The one hard number that traces back to an actual primary source is from the Thresher’s own “State of the Pure” report: across 124,952 recorded test-takers, the average score was 61.46, with 2,719 people scoring a perfect 100 and 336 scoring a 0. That data was collected before February 2018 and hasn’t been publicly updated since, so treat it as a historical data point. Scores in 2026 could easily look different.
• Most “average score” figures floating around today (flat numbers like “68,” or specific decimal averages on quiz-aggregator sites) come from each individual website’s own visitor pool, not from Rice or the Thresher.
• Scores tend to shift with age and life stage, since the list is built almost entirely around cumulative experiences. Someone earlier in their dating or social life will naturally check off fewer items than someone several years further along.
• A score isn’t a report card. It reflects timing and life stage as much as anything else, not character.

Why the Test Has Stayed Popular

A few reasons keep this quiz relevant decades after it started:

It’s a bonding activity. Comparing scores with roommates, friends, or a new partner is a low-stakes way to open up about life experiences without a heavy, formal conversation.

TikTok and Reddit keep it in circulation. The test has become a recurring trend on both platforms, with people posting reaction videos, “guess my score” challenges, and score-reveal clips that regularly rack up huge view counts.

Even Netflix has weighed in. The animated comedy Big Mouth dedicated an entire episode to it: Season 6, Episode 4, titled simply “Rice Purity Test” (aired October 2022), with the test personified as a singing character who causes chaos among the show’s teenage cast.

For a lot of incoming freshmen, it’s close to a rite of passage. Taking the test during welcome week has played some version of that role since it first started circulating on Rice’s campus.

And plenty of people just take it alone. No friends required. Some people simply want to see where they land and think back on how they got there.

Is It Accurate or Scientific?

No, and it was never designed to be. This is an important point that’s easy to lose track of once a number pops up on the screen.

The rice purity test isn’t a psychological instrument, it wasn’t developed by researchers, and it doesn’t measure intelligence, morality, maturity, or worth as a person. It’s a fixed list of experiences that happens to reflect the specific culture and generation it originally came from.

That means some questions inevitably feel dated or don’t apply evenly to everyone.

A high score doesn’t make someone “better,” and a low score doesn’t make someone “worse.” The number mostly reflects age, environment, opportunity, and personal choices, not character.

Treat your result the way it was intended: as entertainment and a conversation starter, not a verdict.

Is It Controversial?

Yes, to some degree, and it’s worth knowing why before you take it. Rice students and outside commentators alike have pushed back on the test over the years, and not without reason.

Some of that criticism is about the test’s roots: the original 1924 version was given exclusively to female students as a way to measure their behavior. Even the 1988 expansion initially separated questions about same-sex experiences from opposite-sex ones, a structural bias the Thresher didn’t fully correct until later revisions.

A 2024 piece in The Trail, a student newspaper at the University of Puget Sound, argued that despite its “harmless” reputation, the test carries undertones tied to sexism and outdated ideas about morality.

Beyond the historical bias, a few other criticisms come up regularly:

• Peer pressure and comparison. Sharing scores in a group can create pressure. People with unusually high or low scores relative to their friends sometimes feel singled out either way.
• No context for individual answers. A checked box counts the same whether an experience was wanted, coerced, or somewhere in between. The test has no way to capture that nuance.
• Cultural and generational bias. The list reflects the assumptions of the era and campus culture it came from, so certain items can feel irrelevant or oddly specific depending on who’s taking it.

None of this means the test is “bad” to take. Millions of people do, every year, without any of it being an issue.

It’s just worth going in with the same mindset the Thresher itself encourages: light, voluntary, and not something to read too much into.

Common Misconceptions, Fact-Checked

Rice Purity Test vs. Its Best-Known Spinoffs

Because of how often “Innocence Test,” “Berkeley Purity Test,” and similar names come up alongside the Rice Purity Test, here’s how they actually compare:

The short version: if you want the version with a documented, traceable history, the Rice Purity Test is it. The others are fun variations on the same idea, but none of them trace back to a single, maintained source the way the original does.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many questions are in the rice purity test?

The standard version has 100 questions, which is where the scoring system (100 minus each checked item) comes from.

What is a good rice purity score?

There isn’t one, really. Scores mostly reflect life stage and personal experience rather than anything to be judged on. Most college-age test takers land somewhere in the middle of the scale.

Is the rice purity test appropriate for teenagers?

The classic 100-question version includes mature themes intended for an older teen and young-adult audience. Anyone taking it should be comfortable with that content.

For a concrete reference point, the official mobile apps for the test carry a 16+ age rating on both the Apple App Store (flagged for frequent mature or suggestive themes) and Google Play (flagged for strong language).

Can my rice purity score change?

Yes. Since the score is based on experiences you’ve had, it naturally shifts over time as your life changes. Many people retake the test months or years later and land on a very different number.

Is my rice purity test score private?

Your results are yours to share or keep to yourself. Whether you post your score, compare it with friends, or keep it private is entirely up to you. See our Privacy Policy for details on how this site handles your data.

What does MPS mean on the rice purity test?

MPS stands for “Member of the Preferred Sex,” an inclusive way of referring to whoever you’re romantically or sexually interested in, used in place of an older, more binary term from earlier versions of the test.

How long does the rice purity test take?

There’s no fixed time limit, but with 100 quick yes-or-no questions, most people get through it in somewhere around 5 to 15 minutes depending on how much thought they put into each answer.

Where did the name “rice purity test” come from?

It’s named after Rice University in Houston, Texas. The test was created and is still hosted by the Rice Thresher, the university’s student newspaper.

The paper first published an early version in 1924 and put together the 100-question version now treated as the standard test in 2012.

Is there an “official” rice purity test?

As close to official as it gets: the version maintained by The Rice Thresher at ricepuritytest.com, since the paper created the current 100-question format and continues to host it. (You’ll sometimes see the test searched or written as one word, “ricepurity,” but it’s the same test either way.)

The Thresher has also published its own aggregate results in the past: a 2018 “State of the Pure” report put the recorded average at 61.46 across nearly 125,000 test-takers. Plenty of other sites host their own versions or spinoffs with the same or similar question lists, but only the Thresher’s version traces directly back to the original source.

Take the Rice Purity Test

Now that you know the history, the scoring, and what your number actually means, you’re ready to take the test yourself.

Go through all 100 questions honestly, check off what applies, and let the score checker tally your result. Then compare notes with friends if you’re feeling brave.