50 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.
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Q 01The words 'degree' and 'graduate' both come from which Latin word, meaning 'step'?
Gradus
Ceremonies for graduating students date to the first European universities in the twelfth century.
Q 02The square academic cap gets its common nickname from its resemblance to a tool used by whom?
Bricklayers
Masons hold mortar on a flat board; the cap probably began in Italy no later than 1520 and may descend from the clerical biretta.
Q 03In American commencements, undergraduates typically begin with the tassel on which side of the cap?
Right
They swap it to the left, individually or all at once, when the degree is conferred.
Q 04In what year was the Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume adopted in the US?
1895
Gardner Cotrell Leonard, whose Albany firm made academic dress, advised the meeting.
Q 05How many velvet bands appear on the sleeves of an American doctoral gown?
Three
Doctors may also swap the mortarboard for a four-, six- or eight-sided velvet tam.
Q 06How long is a doctor's hood under the American code?
4 feet
Bachelors get 3 feet and masters 3.5; the satin lining shows the colours of the institution.
Q 07Under the American code, which tassel colour is reserved for those entitled to wear the doctoral gown?
Gold
Everyone else is meant to wear black or the colour of their subject.
Q 08Which colour does the American code assign to science?
Golden yellow
Green is medicine, purple is law and white is 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
Academic dress grew out of the clerical clothing common across medieval European universities.
Q 10Students at which future Ivy League school had to wear their 'college habits' at all times from 1755?
Princeton
It was still the College of New Jersey; King's College, now Columbia, had a similar rule.
Q 11Who composed the Pomp and Circumstance marches, a staple of American graduations?
Edward Elgar
He took the title from Othello: 'Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war'.
Q 12At 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 13The trio tune of Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 is better known in Britain by what name?
Land of Hope and Glory
A. C. Benson added the words in 1902 and it is considered the unofficial anthem of the Conservative Party.
Q 21Why is a graduation ceremony called a 'commencement' when it marks an ending?
Graduates were commencing as bachelors or masters
Newly made bachelors and masters gained new privileges within the university.
Q 22Which famous economic programme was announced in a 1947 commencement address in Cambridge, Massachusetts?
The Marshall Plan
Secretary of State George C. Marshall used the speech to propose rebuilding post-war Europe.
Q 23Where 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
Q 14The word 'valedictorian' comes from a Latin phrase meaning what?
To say farewell
The salutatorian, ranked second, traditionally gives the opening address; in Australia the top student is the 'dux'.
Q 15In Australia, what Latin title is given to the highest-ranking student in a graduating class?
Dux
The word means 'leader'; the valedictorian term is mostly used in the US, Canada and the Philippines.
Q 16Which of these Latin honours ranks highest?
Egregia cum laude
Meaning 'with extraordinary honours', it is a rare fourth tier above summa, used for a summa-level GPA earned on a harder curriculum.
Q 17What does 'magna cum laude' translate to?
With great praise
Harvard College became the first US college to award final honours to its graduates in 1869.
Q 18Which was the first US college to award final honours to its graduates, in 1869?
Harvard
The Latin honours system remains primarily American, with pockets in the Philippines, Indonesia and southern Africa.
Q 19What does the title of the traditional academic song 'Gaudeamus igitur' mean?
So let us rejoice
Its lyrics are thought to come from a 1287 manuscript, and it started life as a beer-drinking song.
Q 20Which composer quoted 'Gaudeamus igitur' in the finale of his Academic Festival Overture?
Johannes Brahms
The song is also the official anthem of the International University Sports Federation.
Stewart Brand's catalog signed off with the phrase in October 1974; Jobs called the publication 'Google in paperback form'.
Q 24David Foster Wallace's celebrated 2005 commencement speech 'This Is Water' was delivered where?
Kenyon College
Wallace had graduated from Amherst; the Kenyon speech was published as a book after his death.
Q 25The 'Wear Sunscreen' speech often credited to Vonnegut was really a 1997 newspaper column by whom?
Mary Schmich
MIT's real 1997 speaker was Kofi Annan; Baz Luhrmann's spoken-word version hit number one in the UK and Ireland.
Q 26In which newspaper did the 'Wear Sunscreen' column first appear?
Chicago Tribune
It ran on June 1, 1997, framed as a hypothetical commencement address.
Q 27What does 'honoris causa', attached to an honorary degree, mean?
For the sake of the honour
Two of the earliest on record went to Lionel Woodville at Oxford in the late 15th century.
Q 28Which Muppet received an Honorary Doctorate of Amphibious Letters from Southampton College in 1996?
Kermit the Frog
MIT, Cornell, Stanford and Rice, by contrast, refuse to award honorary degrees at all.
Q 29Which of these American universities does NOT award honorary degrees as a matter of policy?
MIT
Cornell, Stanford and Rice share the policy.
Q 30Which Founding Father called himself 'Doctor' after honorary doctorates from St Andrews and Oxford?
Benjamin Franklin
He never attended a university, but the title stuck for the rest of his life.