Rice Purity Test Average Score: The Real Numbers and the Made-Up Ones
Only two sourced figures for the rice purity test average score exist: 62, from a 1924 survey of 119 Rice University women, and 65, from tests taken in Houston on one Saturday in 2017. Both were reported by the Rice Thresher, the student paper behind the test. Everything else you will find, especially the neat little tables of averages by age, comes from no dataset anyone can name.
I ran freshman orientation and residence-hall programs for 11 years, and I have watched students treat a made-up "average for your age" as a verdict on their life. In a typical first-week group chat, somebody posts a screenshot of an "average score by age" chart, and three people quietly decide they are behind. So this page starts with the real data, then takes the fake data apart, then shows you live numbers from people who chose to share their score after taking the Rice Purity Test on this site.
The only two rice purity test average scores anyone has measured
The two sourced averages are 62 (1924) and 65 (2017). The first came from a 10-question paper survey of 119 female Rice students. The second came from website data for tests taken in Houston on Rice's Dis-Orientation day. They look close, but they measure different things, so they should not be read as a trend.
| Year | Who took it | Test format | Sample | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1924 | Female Rice students, surveyed by the Thresher | 10 questions, 10 points each | 119 people | 62 |
| 2017 | Tests taken from Houston on Dis-Orientation day (the Saturday after O-Week) | 100 questions, 1 point each | 274 tests that day | 65 |
Source: Rice Thresher, "Purity Test evolves, spreads beyond Rice" (August 23, 2017), which also reports the 1924 article "Rice Girls Not Quite Half Bad" (March 7, 1924).
The 1924 piece was a light-hearted survey, not the orientation ritual it later became. Two of its questions give a sense of the era: only 4 of the 119 women said they had ever been drunk, while 58 said they had cheated. Those two questions, about drinking and cheating, are the only ones that survive in some form in today's 100-item test.
The 2017 number came from the official site's traffic: about 100 tests a day usually came from Houston, but on Dis-Orientation day that jumped to 274, averaging 65.
Why 62 and 65 cannot be compared
They share a scale of 0 to 100 and nothing else. The 1924 test had 10 questions, so one "yes" cost 10 points; today's has 100 questions at one point each. The questions are almost entirely different. The 1924 group was only women at one university; the 2017 figure counted every test taken from Houston that day, whoever took it. The questions, the people and the century all changed. That the two averages land three points apart is a coincidence, not evidence that students have barely changed in 93 years.
What is a normal rice purity score?
There is no measured normal. The two figures that exist, 62 from 1924 and 65 from Houston in 2017, both sit inside the 50 to 74 band, so if you need a single word for a score in that range, "typical" is as far as the evidence goes. Scores in the 80s and 90s are common among people who take the test in their first week of college, and scores in the 30s and 40s are common a few years later; neither is abnormal, because the list measures opportunity and time as much as choice.
The "average by age" tables are invented
There is no published, credible rice purity test average score by age. No university, newspaper or researcher has released one with a sample size, a date and a method. The tables that dominate search results (one popular claim says the average for 18 to 25 is somewhere between 74 and 90) cite nothing. They are guesses dressed up as data.
Test it yourself: open three pages that publish an average for each age and compare. You will find different numbers for the same age, round ranges, no count of people included, and no year. Many sit on sites unrelated to the test, a strong hint they were written to rank, not to inform. A real statistic always comes with its receipts: who was asked, how many, when, and how.
The same goes for pages that promise a rice purity test with statistical reports. A report is only meaningful if you can see how many entries sit behind each figure. If the page will not show you that, the "report" is decoration.
What about the average rice purity score for college students?
The closest real figure is the 2017 Houston average of 65, taken the Saturday after Rice's orientation week, when Houston test numbers nearly tripled. That is a snapshot of one city on one day, not a national average for college students. The 1924 figure of 62 is a different test entirely. Beyond those two numbers, nobody has published a sourced average for students, so any page claiming one is guessing.
Average rice purity score for 18, 19, 20 and 21 year olds
Nobody has measured it. Searches for an average at 18, 19, 20 or 21 are common, and every page that prints one is guessing. The only adult age-grouped numbers that will ever appear here come from the live stats below, which split 18 to 19 and 20 to 22 into their own rows and publish an average only once a row has 30 entries. Until then the honest answer for any single age is the same as for everyone: the two documented averages are 62 and 65, from very different groups.
Why age alone predicts very little
Age sets an outer limit, because every item asks whether you have ever done something, so your score can only stay level or fall over time. But how fast it falls depends on opportunities, relationships and circumstances far more than on birthdays. That is why one average per age group would hide most of what matters.
Remember who the test was written for: incoming Rice freshmen in O-Week. The official page still says it helped students move from O-Week into college life, and the 2012 Backpage rewrite was made so orientation groups would stop using older, more biased versions. It is a snapshot designed for 18-year-olds, not a measuring stick for a 35-year-old.
From what I saw in residence halls, three things moved scores most. A long-term relationship ticks many dating, physical and intimacy items quickly. Dorm life puts parties, drinking games and roommate situations (yes, sexiling is an item) within easy reach. And someone who went straight into work, lives at home or does not drink can stay in the 80s or 90s well into their twenties, college or not, without anything being unusual.
So two 21-year-olds can sit 50 points apart and both be completely typical of their own lives. If you want to understand your own number, the score meaning page walks through each band and how to read your category breakdown.
Live averages from people who took the test here
Loading the live numbers…
These numbers come from visitors who chose to add their score after taking the test on this site. It is real data, but it is self-selected: it describes people who took this test and opted in, not the population. Treat it as a curiosity, not a scientific sample.
Here is exactly how it works. After you see your result, there is an optional box where you can add your score and pick one of six age ranges: 18-19, 20-22, 23-25, 26-29, 30-39 or 40+. That is all that gets sent. Your answers stay in your browser, as they always do here, and the server stores only a running tally of how many people in each age range got each score. No answers, no IP addresses, no names, no timestamps for individual entries.
To stop one person flooding the numbers, the server keeps a salted, same-day hash of the network address so it can cap submissions at 3 per network per day. That hash is deleted the next day. A band's average and median only appear once that band has at least 30 entries; below that, you will see the count but no average, because a figure built from a dozen people is noise.
Keep the limits in mind. People who opt in may favour scores they find funny or impressive, some will pick the wrong age range, and an orientation-week burst can tilt a band for days. That is why every figure sits next to its number of entries.
Other rice purity test statistics that are actually documented
A few other figures are documented, all from the same 2017 Thresher article. In the year before August 2017, the official test page had 1,524,204 visits. The top cities were Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Chicago and New York. The site earned the Thresher more than the newspaper's own website did.
The test had long outgrown Rice before Gen Z rediscovered it on TikTok in the early 2020s. Be careful with any rice purity test average result you see on social media, though: a score posted in a video is one someone chose to show, the opposite of a random sample. For the full timeline, from the 1924 survey to the 2012 rewrite that is still online today, read the history of the test. Curious how you compare with a partner instead of strangers? The couples comparison is a better use of your result.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average Rice Purity Test score?
The best sourced figure for the average rice purity score is 65, the average for tests taken in Houston on Rice University's Dis-Orientation day in 2017, as reported by the Rice Thresher. The only other sourced average is 62, from a 1924 Thresher survey of 119 Rice women, but that used a 10-question test with 10 points per question, so it is a different measurement and not directly comparable. No broader, national average has ever been published with a sample size and method.
Is there a real Rice Purity Test average score by age?
No credible average by age exists. No university, newspaper or researcher has published average Rice Purity Test scores broken down by age with a named dataset, sample size and date. The age tables that appear on many websites cite no source and often contradict each other. This site collects opt-in scores with an age range and only shows a band's average once at least 30 people have contributed, but that data is self-selected and not a scientific sample. Treat any confident age table as a guess.
Is 65 a normal rice purity score?
A 65 is right on the most-cited real average, the 2017 Houston figure, and within the 50 to 74 range where both sourced averages fall. That makes it an ordinary score, but the word normal can mislead. The test counts experiences without weighing them, so a 65 can come from a long relationship, from a busy social life with drinking and rule-breaking, or from a mix. Your category breakdown says more about you than how close you are to any average.
What does it mean if my score is below average?
Being below an average means you have ticked more of the 100 items than the people in that sample, nothing more. It is not a grade or a ranking, and the test's authors at the Rice Thresher never said any score was good or bad. Since every item asks whether you have ever done something, older people, people in long relationships and people with more social opportunities naturally score lower. Comparing yourself to a single number ignores all of that context.
Why do some age ranges in the live stats show no average?
An age range shows no average until at least 30 people in that range have added their score. Publishing an average from five or ten entries would be misleading, because a couple of joke submissions could easily swing it by ten points or more. You will still see how many entries each range has collected so far. The numbers update as more visitors choose to add their score after taking the test, and nothing about your answers is ever sent.
Where do the average-by-age charts online come from?
Most of those charts appear to be written to fill a page, not drawn from data. They give round ranges for each age, no sample size, no date and no description of who was asked, and different sites give different numbers for the same age. The only documented Rice Purity Test averages, 62 from 1924 and 65 from 2017, come from the Rice Thresher and neither is broken down by age. Treat any age chart without a named source as a guess.