POV: You’re in eighth grade at a sleepover with your friends. You all decided to stay up late, and after an intense game of truth or dare, one of your friends suggests that you all take the Rice Purity Test and compare answers to see which person in your friend group has done the most “stuff” (what did we even mean when we used to say this?). “What’s the Rice Purity Test?” you ask innocently as your friend opens an incognito tab in Safari on her iPod touch. Your friends explain what it is, and after each of you takes the quiz and you share your answers, you spend the rest of the sleepover feeling bad about yourself because your score is not as low as your friends’ (I’ll be honest: even I lied about my answers when I took the test the first time to try and seem cooler and more badass).
Personally, the last time I took the Rice Purity Test was in my junior year of high school, months before my first kiss and years before I lost my virginity. My score was probably somewhere in the 90s, which I remember thinking was SUPER embarrassing compared to my friends who all had much lower scores. In retrospect, most of my friends probably lied about most of their answers just to try and look cool. Now, as a junior in college, my score is 52, which I’m not ashamed to share. Now that we’re all stuck inside due to COVID-19, it’s not surprising that people are re-taking the Rice Purity Test to see how much their scores have changed over the years. For those who did not have the same middle school experience as me, allow me to explain the history of the Rice Purity Test and what it’s all about.
The Rice Purity Test is a series of 100 questions in the form of a self-graded survey that attempts to rate the innocence of a person by asking questions related to drugs, alcohol, sex, the law, and other different kinds of naughty activities. Examples of questions include have you ever been in a relationship, gave oral sex, run from the police, etc. The test begins with the most innocent questions (such as have you ever held hands romantically) and then progresses to dirtier questions (such as have you ever paid or been paid for a sexual act). It will show you your results in the form of a percentage between 0 to 100, where 0 is the least pure and 100 is the most pure. The intention behind creating the Rice Purity Test was to check the maturity of college students so they could bond comfortably with upperclassmen.
The Rice Purity Test was created by Rice University to test the maturity of their students and to help them build relationships with upperclassmen based on their experiences. The original version of Rice Purity Test was created in 1924 and was initially only given to women. Since then, more versions have come out that include more modern questions. Now, college students take the Rice Purity Test purely for fun and to compare their answers to their friends’ answers. An interesting experiment would be to take the test at the beginning of your freshman year of college and then at the end of your senior year, or on your birthday every year, to compare your new scores to your past scores so that you can see how much you have matured.
You can take the most popular version of the Rice Purity Test on the official Rice Purity Test website, www.ricepuritytest.com. As I mentioned earlier, the test gives you your results in the form of a number between 1 and 100, and the higher your score, the more innocent you are considered to be. Here is a simple scale to help you analyze your score more in-depth:
Between 100 and 98:
This score basically means you’re as pure as gold. It would be difficult for anyone over the age of 18 to get this score.
A Score between 97 and 94:
You’re still considered pretty pure. Maybe you’ve had your first kiss or held hands with someone, but you haven’t gone much further than that.
A Score between 93 and 77:
This is about the average score range, which signifies that you are not an averagely pure person. Maybe you’ve french kissed before or even gone down below the belt!
A Score between 76 and 45:
This score means you might have your fair share of alcohol, drugs, or sexual experiences.
A Score between 44 and 9:
A score in this range is definitely below average. You may have been to jail, used hard drugs, or had public sex.
A Score between 9 and 0:
This score means you’ve done some pretty wild stuff, including maybe even paying for or being paid for a sexual act.
Like I mentioned earlier, it is easy to take the Rice Purity Test and feel bad about yourself for not having as low of a score as your friends. There is NO shame in practicing abstinence for any reason, and there is no shame in waiting for the right person to have your first kiss and lose your virginity. The Rice Purity Test is just for fun; don’t take it too seriously! Personally, I love taking quizzes when I’m bored to help pass the time, and the Rice Purity Test is a good quiz to take to learn more about where you fall on the scale of innocence and purity. If you take it with your partner or a friend, you might even learn something new about them that you did not know before or vice versa!
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