Emory University
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40 free Emory University trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Emory University has been collecting stories since 1836. It began as a tiny church college in a rural town, moved to Atlanta on the strength of one family's fortune, and grew into a research university whose hospital and laboratories make headlines around the world. This quiz covers the fun facts people actually trade about Emory: the caped mascot who can call off a lecture, the pranks staged in its oldest buildings, the TV shows filmed on its lawns, and the presidents, poets, musicians and activists who studied, taught or spoke there. You will also meet the medical research that put the campus on the map. It is written for students, alumni, applicants and anyone curious about Atlanta. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Lord Dooley, the unofficial mascot who roams Emory in a black cape and top hat, is what kind of figure?
A skeleton
A skeleton, Dooley first appeared in an 1899 campus article written as if by the bones in a science lab. He borrows his first name and middle initial from whoever leads Emory.
Q 02Emory is nicknamed after which Atlanta company, thanks to gifts from the Candler and Woodruff families?
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola money built modern Emory: company founder Asa Candler gave $1 million and 75 acres in 1914, and the Woodruff brothers added $105 million in stock in 1979.
Q 03What did Emory's Carlos Museum buy in 1999 and return to Egypt in 2003?
A royal mummy
A royal mummy, identified as Pharaoh Ramesses I with help from Emory medical experts, went home as a goodwill gift. He now lies in the Luxor Museum.
Q 04Which TV series kept in its opening credits a car jump filmed outside Seney Hall on Emory's original campus?
The Dukes of Hazzard
The Dukes of Hazzard sent the General Lee flying over a police car outside Seney Hall for its first episode in 1979. MTV restaged the stunt in 2005.
Q 05Which animal did Emory pranksters lead to the third floor of Seney Hall in 2008, then barricade inside?
A zebra
A zebra capped a prank tradition that began with roosters smuggled into classrooms. By the 1930s students were coaxing goats and cows to the upper floors.
Q 06Which federal health agency built its headquarters on 15 acres that Emory donated in 1947?
The CDC
The CDC still sits beside the campus on Clifton Road, and its scientists work with Emory on vaccines and outbreak response.
Q 07Which Jon Krakauer book follows Christopher McCandless, an Emory graduate of 1990 who died in the Alaskan bush?
Into the Wild
Into the Wild recounts how McCandless gave more than $24,000 in college savings to Oxfam after graduating, then drifted across North America for two years.
Q 08Which former US president taught at Emory for decades and held an annual town hall with its students?
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter joined the faculty as a University Distinguished Professor in 1982, the year he and Emory set up the center that bears his name.
Q 09Which US team, nicknamed the Magnificent Seven, lived on Emory's campus during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics?
Women's gymnastics
Women's gymnastics won its first US Olympic team gold that summer. Emory also lodged officials and journalists, and a campus ballroom became a press center.
Q 10Which virus did Emory University Hospital treat in 2014 in the first such cases in the Western Hemisphere?
Ebola
Ebola arrived with Kent Brantly, an American doctor infected while treating patients in Liberia. Emory's isolation unit discharged him, recovered, on August 21.
Q 11Which Nobel Peace laureate spoke at Emory's 1998 Commencement and launched its Buddhist studies program in India?
The Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama was later named a presidential professor at Emory, and the program he set up in Dharamsala grew alongside the Emory-Tibet Partnership founded that same year.
Q 12What must Emory students offer Lord Dooley during Dooley's Week if they want him to cancel their class?
A limerick
A limerick, if it is well written, may persuade Dooley to dismiss the class for the day. The spring celebration held in his name also brings a concert and giveaways.
Q 13Emory began in 1836 in a rural town 38 miles east of Atlanta named after which English university city?
Oxford
Q 21Which golfer, co-founder of the Masters Tournament, studied at Emory before passing the bar after three semesters?
Bobby Jones
Bobby Jones arrived in 1926 already holding an engineering degree and a Harvard literature degree, and four years later he won golf's Grand Slam.
Q 22Which virus is treated with emtricitabine, a drug discovered at Emory and listed by the WHO as essential?
HIV
HIV patients take emtricitabine under the name Emtriva and inside combination pills such as Truvada. Emory's Dennis Liotta, Raymond Schinazi and Woo-Baeg Choi discovered it.
Q 23Emory researchers played a key role in the 2020 nationwide trial of which company's COVID-19 vaccine?
Moderna
Moderna's vaccine was evaluated by Emory's Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit, on a campus where scientists meet every month at a Vaccine Dinner Club.
Oxford still hosts Emory's original campus, where nearly a thousand first- and second-year students begin their degrees before moving on to Atlanta.
Q 14Which Protestant denomination founded Emory College in 1836 and named it for one of its own bishops?
Methodists
Methodists won a state charter for the college in December 1836, and its first fifteen students arrived two years later.
Q 15Which bird did an Emory Wheel sports editor pick as the athletic mascot in 1960, after students showed no interest?
The eagle
The eagle won by default: the editor chose it himself, reasoning that the name fit and would look good on decorations. Emory had gone without an athletic mascot for most of its history.
Q 16Which CNN chief medical correspondent built his career as a neurosurgeon on the Emory School of Medicine faculty?
Sanjay Gupta
Sanjay Gupta became an associate professor of neurosurgery at Emory and operated at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital on spine and trauma cases.
Q 17Which Pulitzer-winning author of The Color Purple has her papers held in Emory's Rose Library?
Alice Walker
Alice Walker's archive sits at Emory beside the papers of Flannery O'Connor, Langston Hughes and Seamus Heaney.
Q 18Emory University Hospital began in 1904 in an Atlanta mansion that which Union general's army had spared?
William Sherman
William Sherman's army left the building standing during the Civil War. Wesley Memorial Hospital opened in it with 50 beds and moved to the Emory campus in 1922.
Q 19Which band's guitarist Peter Buck dropped out of Emory before the group formed in the college town of Athens?
R.E.M.
R.E.M. came together after Buck left Emory and took a job at Wuxtry Records in Athens, where he met singer Michael Stipe.
Q 20Which folk rock duo took its name while studying at Emory and played weekly at a bar in Emory Village?
Indigo Girls
Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers had met in elementary school, and both transferred to Emory after growing homesick at other universities.
Q 24Which animals are studied at the national research center that moved from Florida to Emory's campus in 1965?
Primates
Primates have been its subject since psychologist Robert Yerkes opened it with Yale in 1930. Emory took his name off the center in 2022.
Q 25Which supernatural TV drama used Emory's original campus as the set for its fictional Whitmore College?
The Vampire Diaries
The Vampire Diaries first shot scenes in the library, quad and theater, then made the campus its regular college location. The 2015 comedy Vacation filmed there too.
Q 26Which New York shoe and fashion designer graduated from Emory in 1976 before joining his family's footwear firm?
Kenneth Cole
Kenneth Cole later backed a fellowship at Emory, created in 2001, that trains students in community building and social change.
Q 27Emory graduate Adam Richman became famous hosting which Travel Channel show built around eating challenges?
Man v. Food
Man v. Food ran for four seasons with Richman, who took a degree in international studies at Emory and then a master's at the Yale School of Drama.
Q 28Which Atlanta university hired Isaac Hopkins, then president of Emory College, as its own first president in 1888?
Georgia Tech
Georgia Tech wanted Hopkins because he had started a technology department at Emory. The two schools now run a joint biomedical engineering department.
Q 29Which British monarch is said to have given Emory president Alexander Means the bell now hanging in Seney Hall?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria is said to have given Means the bell, cast in 1796 and now the oldest permanent monument at Emory. It rings once for every graduating student each year.
Q 30Which Booker Prize-winning novelist joined Emory as a writer in residence and placed his archive in its library?
Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie's papers joined a collection already strong in modern poets, among them Ted Hughes, W. B. Yeats and a long list of Irish writers.