The history of the Rice Purity Test

MyRicePurity editorsUpdated 2 October 2026 · How we source facts

The test is more than 100 years old. It began as a newspaper joke about women students, became a 100-item O-Week ritual, and was rewritten in 2012 to remove its worst items. Every date below comes from the Rice Thresher's own reporting unless marked otherwise.

On this page
  1. Timeline
  2. The 1924 original
  3. 1988: 100 items
  4. 2012: the rewrite
  5. O-Week and the debate
  6. Online and beyond Rice

Key facts

What it isA 100-item self-graded survey; score = 100 minus items ticked
Who publishes the originalThe Rice Thresher, Rice University's student newspaper (ricepuritytest.com)[1]
First version7 March 1924: 10 questions, 119 women students, average 62[2][3]
100-item formatFrom 1988[3]
Current Thresher listWritten by the Backpage editors in 2012[4]
Item 69A "?" since at least 1998[3]
MPSMember of the preferred sex; replaced MOS by 1998[3]
Only sourced modern average65, Houston test takers, one day in August 2017[3]
Average by ageNot published by any source we could find

Timeline

  1. 1924The Thresher prints the results of a ten-question survey of 119 women students. Average score: 62[3][2].
  2. 1974The ten-question test reappears with a slip to cut out and mail in. The results were never published[3].
  3. 1980A "misclassified" ad announces "The First Annual Rice Purity Contest"[3].
  4. 1988The 1 April 1988 "Trasher" issue runs a much longer test, one point per question[3][5].
  5. 1998Questions about assault are gone, "MOS" becomes "MPS", and item 69 is a "?"[3].
  6. 2005The Thresher reports an O-Week where the test was banned over sexual harassment concerns[3].
  7. 2008A cruder version ends with not washing your hands after using the restroom[3].
  8. 2011The Backpage editors refuse to print the test[3].
  9. 2012The editors write a new version without the gender and sexuality bias. It is the version the Thresher publishes online today[4][3].
  10. 2017The Thresher's online test is visited 1,524,204 times in a year. Jones College bans it from O-Week[3].
  11. 2022The Independent explains the test to readers after it spreads on TikTok[6].
  12. 2024A University of Puget Sound student paper argues the test still carries sexism and racism[7].

The 1924 original

The first Rice purity test was not a quiz people took for fun. On 7 March 1924 the Thresher printed the results of an informal survey of 119 women undergraduates under the headline "Rice Girls Not Quite Half Bad"[2]. There were ten questions, each worth ten points, and they reflect their decade: whether you had ever been engaged and broken it off, done anything you would not tell your mother, been drunk, cheated[3].

The average was 62. Fifty-eight of the 119 said they had cheated; only four said they had ever been drunk[3]. The article framed the results as proof that young women arrived at college unsophisticated and were "demoralized" year by year[3]. Men were not asked.

Two questions survive, in spirit, in the modern test: cheating and being drunk[3]. On our list they are item 43 (been drunk) and items 63 and 88 (cheating on a test, cheating on a partner).

1988: the 100-item test

After a mail-in revival in 1974 and a joke contest ad in 1980, the Thresher ran a very different test in 1988[3]. The Thresher's 2017 history describes it as 100 questions worth one point each; Wikipedia's summary of the same 1988 issue counts 150[3][8]. Either way it used "MOS" for "member of the opposite sex". It put questions about same-sex activity further down the list, as if they were less pure, and it included sexual crimes[3]. The Backpage also suggested a new rule: if you do not understand a question, add two points[3].

By 1998 the assault questions were gone, "MOS" had become "MPS" (member of the preferred sex), and item 69 was simply "?"[3]. Other problems stayed: the 1998 and 2008 versions still had an item about using alcohol to lower a partner's resistance[3].

2012: the version people take today

In 2011 the Backpage editors refused to print the test at all[3]. In 2012 they changed their minds and wrote a new one. Anthony Lauriello, one of those editors, explained why: O-Week groups were going to take some version anyway, the old lists were dated (one item involved drive-in movie theaters, none involved phones), and worse, they treated same-sex activity as less pure and one question took a point from the victim of a rape as well as the rapist[4].

The editors went through the wording item by item to remove gender and sexuality bias and make every item a consensual choice[4]. That 2012 list is the one the Thresher publishes at ricepuritytest.com[3][1]. More on the official test. The Thresher reported in 2017 that the test site got more visits than its own news site and made it more money[3].

Our version follows the 2012 approach (inclusive, consensual, one point per item) in our own words. How the versions compare.

O-Week and the long debate

The test's home is Orientation Week. One alumnus told the Thresher his advisor read the items aloud in 2000 while the group kept their own scores[3]. Lauriello's argument for keeping it was that it helped groups move from the summer-camp feel of O-Week to the less G-rated year ahead, and that no one should ever be made to take it[4].

The other side is just as old. A 2005 O-Week banned it over sexual harassment concerns, and in 2017 Jones College's coordinators banned it because, as one put it, it can leave new students uncomfortable and self-conscious about what they have or have not done[3]. Lovett's coordinator said advisors should wait until after the healthy relationships talks, and Will Rice used its talk to warn new students not to treat the test as a checklist[3]. The criticism, in full.

Online, and far beyond Rice

By 2017 the Thresher's online version had 1,524,204 visits in a year, with Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Chicago and New York as the top cities[3]. One Georgia Tech residence hall kept a whiteboard of scores; high school students in Houston passed it around on school iPads[3]. In 2022 The Independent explained it to readers after it spread on TikTok[6].

Rice's was not the only purity test. Barnard College, the University of Toronto and Indiana University all had versions in the 1930s, Caltech had an "Official Purity Test", and an Ann Landers column ran one in 1966[8]. Other purity tests through history.

Sources

  1. The Rice Purity Test as published by the Rice Thresher, ricepuritytest.com. Link
  2. "Rice Girls Not Quite Half Bad", The Thresher, Vol. 9, No. 22, 7 March 1924 (Rice University Digital Scholarship Archive). Link
  3. Emily Abdow, "Purity Test evolves, spreads beyond Rice", The Rice Thresher, 23 August 2017. Link
  4. Anthony Lauriello, "Release of new purity test long overdue", The Rice Thresher, 17 August 2012. Link
  5. "The New and Improved 1988 Rice Trasher Purity Test", The Rice Thresher, Vol. 75, No. 24.5, 1 April 1988 (Rice University Digital Scholarship Archive). Link
  6. Joanna Whitehead, "What is the Rice purity test and how do you play?", The Independent, 11 July 2022. Link
  7. Frannie Edwards-Hughes, "The Impure Truth About the Rice Purity Test", The Trail (University of Puget Sound), 11 April 2024. Link
  8. "Purity test", Wikipedia, read 2 October 2026. Used for the purity tests outside Rice (1935 to 2009) and their references. Link

All sources and how we checked them