Rice Purity Test Score Meaning: What Your Number Really Says

The awkward truth about rice purity test score meaning is that the people who wrote the test never gave the scores one. The Rice Thresher, Rice University's student newspaper, hosts the official 100-question version, and its page says nothing about what a 74 or a 31 means. So every score chart online, including the one on this page, is somebody's interpretation.

I ran freshman orientation and residence-hall programs for 11 years, and in a typical orientation group someone finishes the test, announces their number, and immediately asks "wait, is that good?" Here is the most honest answer I can give: what the number measures, where we drew our lines, and how to read your result by category. No number yet? Take the Rice Purity Test first. It takes three minutes and nothing you tick leaves your browser.

What the Thresher never told you about your score

Your score is 100 minus the number of items you have done. That is the entire official meaning. The Thresher publishes no ranges, labels or averages on the test page; it only jokes that the list is not a bucket list and that finishing it would likely be fatal. Any score interpretation is added from outside.

The maths is also completely flat. Holding hands romantically (item 1) and a felony conviction (item 65) each cost exactly one point. Nobody ever weighted the list, which is the first reason a bare number tells you less than people assume.

The scale runs from 100 down to 0: you start at 100 and lose a point for each item you tick, so 0 is the floor and 100 is the max score (the scoring itself is explained on the Rice Purity Test page). The 1924 original had 10 questions worth 10 points each; the 100 one-point layout arrived in 1988. Our items follow the Thresher's current order and scope, so scores match the official page.

Is the rice purity test supposed to be high or low?

Neither. High means fewer of the listed experiences, low means more, and there is no target. When Will Rice College advisors raised the test in their 2017 Healthy Relationships talk, their warning was that it is not a checklist. In any dorm lounge, the 98 and the 22 get teased with equal enthusiasm.

The rice purity score chart (our scale, with reasons)

Our rice purity test score scale splits 0 to 100 into seven bands named after how cooked a pot of rice is, from Uncooked (a perfect 100) to Tahdig (0 to 9). The cut-offs are our own, chosen to follow which kinds of items people usually tick as the score falls.

Some lines come straight from the test's structure. The first 43 items cover dating, physical contact, sexting and intimacy, so a score below 57 is impossible without something from alcohol, drugs, rule-breaking or sex. And the first 66 items stop before the Sex category, so you could technically reach 34 without ticking "Had sex?". So low rice purity test score ranges do not always mean what friends assume.

Every score range, band by band

Each band sketches the most common pattern at that level, not a rule. Check your own category results against it.

100: Uncooked rice (the max score)

Nothing ticked, not even "Been on a date?". It is rarer than people expect, because the opening items are so mild. The 100s in my orientation groups had just arrived, had grown up in strict homes, or simply were not interested yet. All three are fine.

90 to 99: Fresh grain

A handful of firsts: a date, a crush, maybe a kiss, perhaps a glass of wine at a family wedding (alcohol outside a religious ceremony counts). The classic week-one-of-college range. In numbers, a 90 to 99 means 1 to 10 ticks, and since Dating and kissing alone holds 14 items, every score in this band can come entirely from that first category.

75 to 89: Lightly steamed

Relationships and kissing are well covered. Tick all 14 dating and kissing items and nothing else, and you land on 86. The high 70s usually add some physical items or a first drinking game, while most explicitly sexual items stay blank.

50 to 74: Fully cooked

The broad middle, and where both sourced averages sit: 62 in 1924 and 65 in Houston in 2017 (the average score page explains why those are different kinds of figure). Sex is often on the list by the low 60s. The range is wide, though, so two 60s can have little in common.

25 to 49: Fried rice

Well into the lower half. Usually sexual experience, nights out remembered only in parts, and stories you would not tell your parents. Below 34, some items from the sex, adventurous sex or wild-side sections must be ticked. Put differently: a 42, 44, 45 or 48 is still reachable with nothing from items 67 to 100, because 66 items sit before the Sex category; a 32 is not.

10 to 24: Spicy fried rice

A long, eventful list with only the rarest items blank. Scores this low nearly always include sexual-health items such as sex without a condom. Practically: regular STI testing is ordinary adult maintenance, and condoms are cheap. The arithmetic is firm here too: 76 to 90 ticks means at least 10 of them come from the last 34 items, whatever else is on the list.

0 to 9: Tahdig

Tahdig is the crispy rice at the bottom of a Persian rice pot. Very few scores land here, and a true 0 means every item, the illegal and non-consensual ones included. If you ticked things for a laugh, retake it honestly.

Rice purity test score meaning for 60, 38, 31 and 23

These numbers get searched right after a group chat compares results. Here is each one in ticks, its band, and what must be true of the list to get there.

What does a 60 mean?

Forty ticked items, Fully cooked, and close to both documented averages. You can reach 60 without a drink, a broken rule or any item from the Sex category, just by ticking 40 of the first 43 items. A 58 works the same way: 42 ticks, which still fits inside those first 43.

What does a 38 mean?

Sixty-two ticks, in the Fried rice band. It is still possible without the Sex section, but a 38 usually blends sexual experience with drinking and rule-breaking. Check your Rules row: its 14 items quietly pull plenty of scores into the 30s.

What does a 31 mean?

Sixty-nine ticks (yes, people notice). At least three come from the last 34 items. It sits in Fried rice and usually reflects a few relationships and an active social life. For the line itself: 34 is the lowest score possible without touching items 67 to 100, a 33 needs at least one of them, and a 31 needs three.

What does a 23 mean?

Seventy-seven ticks, in Spicy fried rice, with at least 11 from the last 34 items. The rice purity test results meaning here is simply a long list, often built over years. Go five points lower and the floor rises again: a 20 or below needs at least 14 items from the last 34.

Is a 32, 45, 58, 67 or 77 a bad rice purity score?

No score is bad, but people keep asking about particular numbers, so here is what each one guarantees. The test has 100 items in a fixed order: items 1 to 43 cover dating, kissing, getting physical, sexting and intimacy, 44 to 66 cover alcohol, drugs and rule-breaking, and 67 to 100 cover sex, adventurous sex and the wild side. That order means a score sets a floor on where your ticks came from, and the table reads it off for the numbers people search most.

Computed from the test's category sizes, ricepurity-tester.com

Read the right-hand column as a floor, not a description. A 45 can be sixty kisses and a lot of parties, or a quieter list with sex in it; the number cannot tell you which, and neither can anyone teasing you about it. Your own category breakdown on the result screen can.

Read the breakdown, not the number

Two people with a 60 can have completely different lists, which is why our result also shows a purity percentage for each of the 10 categories.

Picture two composite students from any orientation year. One ticked all 14 dating items, all 17 physical items, all 3 digital items and 6 of the 9 intimacy items: 40 ticks, a 60. She has never had a drink, never been in trouble and has not had sex. The other ticked all 5 alcohol items, all 4 drug items, all 14 rule-breaking items, 10 dating and 7 physical items. Also 40 ticks, also 60, and he has not had sex either. Same score, opposite people.

So look at the rows. A low Rules row beside near-perfect rows elsewhere usually means one eventful year, not a lifestyle. The full list of questions by category shows which items sit where.

What is a good rice purity score?

There is no good score. The test describes experiences; it does not grade them. A 95 at 18 and a 40 at 30 are both ordinary. The only bad use of the number is judging someone with it, yourself included.

Rice's own orientation staff have argued both sides: one college's O-Week banned the test in 2005 after a coordinator said it could amount to sexual harassment, and Jones College dropped it from O-Week in 2017. My rule with groups: taking it is optional, sharing is optional, and nobody explains a tick. If something on the list happened without your consent, it is neither an achievement nor a failure, and it does not belong in anyone's scorekeeping. If you want a benchmark anyway, the only two documented averages are 62 and 65, both inside Fully cooked, and each came from one place on one day.