What your Rice Purity Test score means

Your Rice Purity Test score is simply 100 minus the number of questions you answered yes to. A 100 means you have done none of the hundred things on the list; a 0 means you have done all of them. Everything else is interpretation — and interpretation is what this page is for.

The one thing worth saying before any of it: the score measures exposure, not character. It goes down when you have lived through more of a specific, century-old list of experiences, most of which are ordinary parts of being a young adult. It is a conversation starter, not an assessment.

The seven score bands

Scores are usually read in seven rough ranges. The band you land in tends to track your age and circumstances far more closely than anything else about you.

100

Untouched

A perfect 100. No romantic hand-holding, no drinks, not even a run-in with the police. Very few people keep a perfect score past their first semester.

Who lands here: Almost always someone who has not started dating yet — often a younger teenager, or an adult who has deliberately avoided most of the list.

Keep in mind: A perfect score is unusual enough that people tend to assume you skipped questions. It only means the list has not caught up with you yet.

90–99

Mostly innocent

You've dipped a toe in — a first kiss, a first date, maybe one party — but not much more. Common among incoming college freshmen.

Who lands here: Common for high schoolers and for students in the first weeks of college, before Orientation Week has done its work.

Keep in mind: This is the range most people start from. If you are in it at eighteen you are in very ordinary company.

70–89

Fairly innocent

Some romantic and social experience, a few parties, nothing wild. Typical for the first year or two of college.

Who lands here: Typical of the first year or two of college: a relationship or two, a handful of parties, some drinking.

Keep in mind: The drop from the 90s to the 70s is usually the fastest one people experience, because the early questions cover things that happen close together.

50–69

Average

You've lived a bit: relationships, drinking, and a few decisions you'd rather not explain. This is close to the average score people report on the test.

Who lands here: Where a lot of college juniors and seniors land, and close to the score most people report when they take the test as adults.

Keep in mind: If you are looking for "the average", this band is it — but the average is a description of a crowd, not a target.

30–49

Experienced

You've done most of what's on the list and have the stories to prove it. Common among upperclassmen and recent graduates.

Who lands here: Common among upperclassmen, recent graduates, and anyone who has been in several long relationships.

Keep in mind: Most of the remaining points sit behind questions about drugs and the law, which is why scores tend to slow down here rather than keep falling.

10–29

Very experienced

Very little on this list is new to you. You've checked off the majority of items, including some of the rarer ones.

Who lands here: Reported by people who have been sexually active for years, often alongside some experience with drugs or police contact.

Keep in mind: Scores this low usually require saying yes to questions that have nothing to do with sex, so the number says less about a person’s dating life than it looks like it does.

0–9

Wild

Almost every box checked. Either you've had an extraordinarily eventful life or you weren't taking this very seriously. Both are fine.

Who lands here: Very rare honestly. Reaching single digits means saying yes to nearly every item on the list, including the last few.

Keep in mind: Plenty of single-digit scores are jokes — answering yes to everything is its own small tradition. Nothing wrong with that either.

What scores do people actually report?

Nobody knows for certain. There is no official dataset: the test has never had a central scorekeeper, and every honest version of it — this one included — scores your answers privately and stores nothing. Any "average Rice Purity score" you see online, including the ranges below, is assembled from what people volunteer in forums, comment sections and class polls. Treat them as folklore with a pattern to them, not statistics.

High school 85–100: Most of the list is still ahead. Scores in this range are the norm, not a sign of being behind.
First-year college student 75–95: The classic Orientation Week score. Taking the test again in May is half the point of taking it in August.
Mid-college 55–80: The steepest drop usually happens here, driven by the relationship, party and drinking questions.
Graduating senior 45–70: By now the score tends to move in ones and twos rather than tens.
Twenties and beyond 30–60: Long relationships push the sexual-experience questions up while the campus-discipline questions stay untouched.

Why your score only goes down

Every question asks whether you have ever done something, so a yes can never turn back into a no. Your score is a ratchet: it can stay where it is or fall, but it cannot recover. That is the whole reason the test became a campus tradition — students take it during Orientation Week, take it again a year later, and compare the drop rather than the number.

It also means a score is only meaningful next to your own previous score. Comparing yours to a friend's mostly tells you which of you is older, or which of you went to more parties last semester.

What the score does not tell you

Whether you are normal. The bands describe crowds. Any individual score inside a band is unremarkable, including yours.
Anything about consent or safety. The list treats a first kiss and a serious incident as one point each. It is a blunt instrument and was never designed to be anything else.
How honest anyone else was. Scores shared publicly skew — people round toward whatever their group treats as the flattering direction.

Frequently asked questions about scores

What is the average Rice Purity Test score?

There is no official average, because no one collects the results — every version of the test, including this one, scores you privately. Going by what people report online, college-age takers most often land somewhere between 50 and 80, and the number drifts lower with age.

Is a high Rice Purity Test score good?

Neither direction is good or bad. The score counts experiences, not virtues: a 90 usually means someone is young, and a 40 usually means someone has been in a few relationships. Treating it as a grade is the one way to read it wrong.

Is 70 a good Rice Purity Test score?

A 70 sits at the top of the "fairly innocent" band and is one of the most common results for students in their first two years of college. It typically means some dating and drinking experience but little beyond that.

What does a score under 30 mean?

It means you have said yes to more than seventy of the hundred items, which almost always includes questions about drugs, the police or the law rather than sex alone. It is a measure of how eventful your life has been, not a warning sign.

Does your Rice Purity Test score go down over time?

It can only go down — the questions ask whether you have ever done something, so a yes never turns back into a no. That is why people retake it each year and compare: the size of the drop is the interesting part, not the number itself.

Should I share my Rice Purity Test score?

That is entirely up to you. The score is a compressed summary of some very personal answers, and a number that looks harmless in a group chat can still invite questions you would rather not answer. Share the number if it is fun; you never owe anyone the individual answers.

Want to see where you land? Take the test — it is 100 questions, one screen at a time, and nothing you answer leaves your browser. You can also read all 100 questions first.