Penn State Trivia
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6correct to beat the crowd
48 free Penn State trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Penn State opened in 1855 as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania on 200 acres donated by a congressman, and its teams once wore pink and black. Today it fills the second-largest stadium in the Western Hemisphere, runs the largest university creamery in the country and hosts the biggest student-run philanthropy in the world. These 48 questions cover the University Park campus and its traditions: the Nittany Lion mascot invented on a trip to Princeton, the limestone Lion Shrine, Old Main, Mount Nittany, THON and Four Diamonds, the Berkey Creamery, Happy Valley and State College. The football half covers Beaver Stadium, Rip Engle and Joe Paterno, the 1982 and 1986 titles, the White Out, Linebacker U, James Franklin and the 2026 hire of Matt Campbell, plus the wrestling, fencing and gymnastics dynasties. Every answer is cited to a page we checked. Play in sets of ten or print the list for a tailgate.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What name did Penn State's founders pick in 1855 to reassure rural families wary of colleges?
Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania
Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania granted college degrees from the start; the humble name was chosen to soothe distrust. It became the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania in 1862.
Q 02Which Penn State president won the school university status in 1953?
Milton Eisenhower
Milton Eisenhower, younger brother of the sitting U.S. president, then pushed to rename State College. Voters refused, so he got the campus its own postal address: University Park.
Q 03Which 1882 president pushed Penn State beyond agriculture and has a main road named for him?
George Atherton
George Atherton built an engineering program that by the early 1900s ranked among the ten largest in the nation. Atherton Hall is named for his wife, Frances.
Q 04Penn State's College of Medicine, which opened to students in 1967, is in which town?
Hershey
Hershey won the school with money: in 1963 the M. S. Hershey Foundation, built on chocolate magnate Milton Hershey's fortune, offered Penn State $50 million to start a medical school there.
Q 05What were Penn State's original official colors before blue and white?
Black and dark pink
Black and dark pink, adopted in 1887, lasted barely three years. The pink bleached toward white in the sun, so the school switched to blue and white in 1890.
Q 06Old Coaly, whose skeleton Penn State still displays, hauled stone for Old Main as what kind of animal?
Mule
Mule. Coaly was never an official mascot, but students were so fond of him that his bones were kept after he died, and the skeleton now stands in the HUB-Robeson Center.
Q 07Joe Mason dreamed up the Nittany Lion in 1904 to outdo which baseball opponent's tiger mascot?
Princeton
Princeton and its famous tiger left Mason embarrassed that Penn State had no mascot, so he made up the lion on the spot. He pressed the idea in a 1907 student magazine, and students took to it.
Q 08The "Nittany" in Nittany Lion comes from the name of what local landmark?
A mountain
A mountain: Mount Nittany rises above campus, though what the word first meant is obscure. The romantic legends of a maiden named Nita-Nee were spun by writer Henry Shoemaker.
Q 09Why did sculptor Heinz Warneke return to his Nittany Lion Shrine in 1978?
To repair its ear
To repair its ear: vandals smashed off the lion's right ear in 1978, and Warneke, by then in his eighties, came back to fix the stone himself.
Q 10Who paid for the Nittany Lion Shrine, unveiled in 1942?
A graduating class
A graduating class paid: the seniors of 1940 chose the shrine as their class gift. Seven decades on the class of 2012 paid again, funding the 2013 renovation.
Q 11Who dabbed washable orange paint on the Lion Shrine in 1966 to stir up Penn State's own students?
The coach's wife, Sue
The coach's wife, Sue Paterno, wanted to fire up the campus before the Syracuse game. Soon after, Syracuse students arrived and painted the lion orange themselves.
Q 12Why was Penn State's aging original Old Main torn down in 1929?
Structural faults
Structural faults had already closed the upper floors by the 1920s. Its limestone blocks were reused in the new Old Main, which opened on the same spot in 1930.
Q 13Penn State's Berkey outlet, founded in 1865, is the largest university what in the U.S.?
Creamery
Q 21Penn State's law school still carries which name from its 1834 founding in Carlisle?
Dickinson
Dickinson Law was an independent school, older than Penn State itself, when the university's trustees voted in 1997 to absorb it. It bills itself as Pennsylvania's oldest law school.
Q 22State College and its surrounding townships are collectively known by what nickname?
Happy Valley
Happy Valley, by one popular account, earned its name in the Great Depression, when Penn State's presence spared the area the worst of the slump.
Q 23State College, home of University Park, is Pennsylvania's largest what?
Borough
Borough it stays, and under its old name. When the college became a university in 1953, voters refused to rename the town, which is why campus mail goes to University Park instead.
Creamery rules forbid mixing flavors in one cone. Campus lore says the lone exception went to President Bill Clinton, who got two flavors together on a 1996 visit.
Q 14Which famous ice cream duo learned the trade from a Penn State correspondence course?
Ben and Jerry
Ben and Jerry, in full Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, studied ice cream making by mail. In 1978 they opened their first shop in a converted gas station in Vermont.
Q 15THON, Penn State's dance marathon, is described as the world's largest what?
Student-run philanthropy
Student-run philanthropy on this scale started small, with 78 dancers at the first marathon in 1973. THON has since raised more than $200 million for families facing childhood cancer.
Q 16Which childhood cancer charity, its name drawn from a young patient's own story, is THON's sole beneficiary?
Four Diamonds
Four Diamonds are the courage, wisdom, honesty and strength a knight seeks in a tale Christopher Millard wrote shortly before he died at 14. His parents started the charity in his memory.
Q 17THON trimmed itself from 48 hours to 46 in 2007 when it moved into which campus venue?
Bryce Jordan Center
Bryce Jordan Center is THON's fourth home, after the HUB ballroom, the White Building and, from 1999, Rec Hall. Dancers go all 46 hours without sitting or sleeping.
Q 18What is the name of Penn State's independent, student-run newspaper?
The Daily Collegian
The Daily Collegian traces its roots to the Free Lance, a monthly begun in 1887, and took its current name in 1940. Despite that name, the print edition now comes out once a week.
Q 19The Penn State Alumni Association claims which distinction among alumni groups worldwide?
Largest dues-paying membership
Largest dues-paying membership is the association's long-standing boast. Within six years of its 1870 founding, alumni were electing trustees to the school's board, and they still choose nine today.
Q 20What is Penn State's online campus, launched in the late 1990s, called?
World Campus
World Campus is a new form of an old habit. Penn State began teaching at a distance in 1892, with correspondence courses for Pennsylvania farmers.
Q 24Beaver Stadium is named after James A. Beaver, who held which office from 1887 to 1891?
Governor of Pennsylvania
Governor of Pennsylvania was one of several roles. Beaver was a Civil War general who lost a leg in battle, and he led Penn State's board of trustees.
Q 25Where did Beaver Stadium's first grandstands, opened in 1960, come from?
Penn State's previous football field
Penn State's previous football field, New Beaver Field, was taken apart after the 1959 season, moved and reassembled as Beaver Stadium. Even its press box made the trip, and stood until it was demolished in 2025.
Q 26Which Pennsylvania company put its name on the field at Beaver Stadium in a 2025 deal?
West Shore Home
West Shore Home, a home remodeling company based in Mechanicsburg, pledged $50 million over 15 years. Penn State's trustees approved the field name by a 22-8 vote.
Q 27Before its 1993 Big Ten debut, what was Penn State football's affiliation?
Independent
As an independent, Penn State football answered to no conference for about a century. The school accepted an invitation in 1990 and became the eleventh member of a league that kept calling itself the Big Ten.
Q 28Penn State's 1986 national title came by upsetting which top-ranked team in the Fiesta Bowl?
Miami
Miami outgained Penn State 445 yards to 162 but threw five interceptions, all by Heisman winner Vinny Testaverde. The last came at the goal line in the final seconds.
Q 29Penn State and Michigan State play football for which trophy?
Land Grant
Land Grant Trophy honors two schools that were both founded in 1855 and became pioneer land-grant colleges. It dates to 1993, when coaches George Perles and Joe Paterno made the game a trophy rivalry.
Q 30Who wore white at Penn State's first White Out, in 2004?
Only the student section
Only the student section dressed in white for that 2004 loss to Purdue, and the same held in 2005 and 2006. The whole stadium first joined in 2007, when Notre Dame came to town.