Graduation Trivia
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48 free Graduation trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
42 free graduation trivia questions with answers. Everyone has sat through a graduation, but few people know why the hat is square, why the tassel moves, or why an English march written for a king plays at every American high school. This quiz covers the ceremony from every angle: medieval gowns and hoods, the 1895 code that standardised American regalia, valedictorians and Latin honours, Gaudeamus igitur, honorary degrees for frogs, doctoral swords in Finland, and the commencement speeches everyone quotes but nobody attributes correctly. It starts easy (what a mortarboard resembles, what cum laude means) and works up to the history and worldwide customs that make good grad-party or classroom trivia: the year of the first US PhD, the first woman to earn a doctorate, and where the cap toss began. Free to use for a graduation party, a senior assembly or a teacher's end-of-year quiz. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on academic dress, degrees, ceremonies and speeches, and each question carries its source. No recycled listicle errors.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Latin word meaning 'step' gives English the word 'degree'?
Gradus
Gradus, Latin for 'step', reached English as 'degree' through Old French degré; each academic degree marks a step up the ladder of learning.
Q 02The square academic cap gets its common nickname from its resemblance to a tool used by whom?
Bricklayers
Bricklayers carry mortar on a flat square board called a hawk, and the flat square top of the academic cap earned it the nickname mortarboard.
Q 03In American commencements, undergraduates typically begin with the tassel on which side of the cap?
Right
Right is the starting side: the tassel hangs on the right of the cap until the degree is conferred, then graduates move it to the left.
Q 04In what year was the Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume adopted in the US?
1895
1895 is when the Intercollegiate Commission, meeting at Columbia in New York, adopted the code; Gardner Cotrell Leonard, whose Albany firm Cotrell & Leonard made academic dress, advised it.
Q 05How many velvet bands appear on the sleeves of an American doctoral gown?
Three
Three velvet bars cross each sleeve of the American doctoral gown, matching the velvet facings down its front; doctors may also swap the mortarboard for a velvet tam.
Q 06How long is a doctor's hood under the American code?
4 feet
4 feet is the doctor's hood length under the code; bachelors' hoods are 3 feet and masters' 3.5 feet, and the satin lining shows the institution's colours.
Q 07Under the American code, which tassel colour is reserved for those entitled to wear the doctoral gown?
Gold
Gold is the tassel colour the code reserves for doctors and others entitled to the doctoral gown; everyone else wears black or the colour of their subject.
Q 08Which colour does the American code assign to science?
Golden yellow
Golden yellow is the code's colour for science; green marks medicine, purple law and white arts and letters.
Q 09According to the history of academic dress, what was the original practical purpose of the gown?
To keep the wearer warm
To keep the wearer warm was the gown's first job: medieval university halls were unheated, and scholars, most of them clerics, wore long robes against the cold.
Q 10Who composed the Pomp and Circumstance marches, a staple of American graduations?
Edward Elgar
Edward Elgar wrote the five Pomp and Circumstance marches between 1901 and 1930; the trio of March No. 1 is the tune played at American commencements.
Q 11At which university was Pomp and Circumstance first played at a graduation ceremony, in 1905?
Yale
Elgar was there to collect an honorary doctorate of music, and the slow trio section stuck.
Q 12The trio tune of Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 is better known in Britain by what name?
Land of Hope and Glory
Land of Hope and Glory pairs the trio tune with words A. C. Benson wrote in 1902, Edward VII's coronation year; it is a fixture of the Last Night of the Proms.
Q 13The word 'valedictorian' comes from a Latin phrase meaning what?
To say farewell
To say farewell is the sense of Latin 'vale dicere', from which 'valedictorian' and 'valediction' derive; 'vale' alone was the Roman word for goodbye.
Q 21Where did Steve Jobs take 'Stay hungry. Stay foolish.', the closing line of his 2005 Stanford speech, from?
The back of the last Whole Earth Catalog
Stewart Brand's catalog signed off with the phrase in October 1974; Jobs called the publication 'Google in paperback form'.
Q 22David Foster Wallace's celebrated 2005 commencement speech 'This Is Water' was delivered where?
Kenyon College
Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, hosted the speech on May 21, 2005; Wallace, an Amherst graduate, died in 2008 and the address was published as a book in 2009.
Q 23The 'Wear Sunscreen' speech often credited to Vonnegut was really a 1997 newspaper column by whom?
Mary Schmich
Q 14In Australia, what Latin title is given to the highest-ranking student in a graduating class?
Dux
Dux, Latin for 'leader', is the title Australian schools give their top-ranked student, and it is also the root of the English word 'duke'.
Q 15What does 'magna cum laude' translate to?
With great praise
With great praise is the literal sense of magna cum laude; 'laus' is Latin for praise, and 'magna' ranks the honour above plain cum laude.
Q 16Which was the first US college to award final honours to its graduates, in 1869?
Harvard
Harvard began awarding Latin honours to its graduates in 1869, the first American college to do so; the practice is largely confined to the United States.
Q 17What does the title of the traditional academic song 'Gaudeamus igitur' mean?
So let us rejoice
So let us rejoice is the sense of Gaudeamus igitur, literally 'therefore let us rejoice'; the Latin drinking song became a university anthem across Europe.
Q 18Which composer quoted 'Gaudeamus igitur' in the finale of his Academic Festival Overture?
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms wrote the Academic Festival Overture in 1880 to thank the University of Breslau for an honorary doctorate, and Gaudeamus igitur crowns its finale.
Q 19Why is a graduation ceremony called a 'commencement' when it marks an ending?
Graduates were commencing as bachelors or masters
Graduates were commencing as bachelors or masters: in medieval universities the ceremony marked a new master's 'inception', the start of his licence to teach.
Q 20Which economic programme was announced in a June 1947 commencement address at a Massachusetts university?
The Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was outlined by Secretary of State George C. Marshall in his June 5, 1947 address; Congress funded it as the European Recovery Program in 1948.
Mary Schmich, a newspaper columnist, wrote the piece as a mock commencement speech on June 1, 1997; a viral email misattributed it to Kurt Vonnegut, and Baz Luhrmann's 1999 spoken-word version topped the UK chart.
Q 24In which newspaper did the 'Wear Sunscreen' column first appear?
Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune ran the column on June 1, 1997, framed as a hypothetical commencement address under the headline 'Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young'.
Q 25What does 'honoris causa', attached to an honorary degree, mean?
For the sake of the honour
For the sake of the honour is the literal sense of honoris causa; the earliest recorded honorary degree went to Lionel Woodville at Oxford in the late 1470s.
Q 26Which Muppet received an honorary doctorate from Southampton College in 1996?
Kermit the Frog
Kermit the Frog collected an honorary Doctorate of Amphibious Letters at the Long Island college's 1996 commencement and delivered the graduation address himself.
Q 27Which of these American universities does NOT award honorary degrees as a matter of policy?
MIT
MIT has never awarded an honorary degree, a policy it traces to founder William Barton Rogers; Cornell, Stanford and Rice hold the same line.
Q 28Which Founding Father called himself 'Doctor' after honorary doctorates from St Andrews and Oxford?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin received an honorary doctorate from St Andrews in 1759 and another from Oxford in 1762; he never attended a university, yet 'Dr Franklin' stuck for life.
Q 29In which year did Yale award the first PhDs in the United States?
1861
1861 is when America's first PhDs were conferred, in philosophy and psychology, physics and classics; the research doctorate was a German model born of Berlin's 1810 reforms.
Q 30At which university did Elena Cornaro Piscopia become the first woman PhD in 1678?
Padua
Padua conferred her doctorate in philosophy on June 25, 1678, after she defended theses on Aristotle in Latin; the Church had blocked her from a theology degree.