Princeton University Trivia
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69 free Princeton University trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Princeton University trivia quiz covers the fourth-oldest college in America from its 1746 charter as the College of New Jersey, through the Battle of Princeton and the four months Nassau Hall served as the nation's capital, to the modern research university with the largest endowment per student in the country. You will find questions on the presidents who shaped it (Witherspoon, McCosh, Woodrow Wilson, Shirley Tilghman), the campus (Nassau Hall's bronze tigers, the buried Big Cannon, Lake Carnegie, the University Chapel, Firestone Library), student life (eating clubs and bicker, the Honor Code, the FitzRandolph Gates, Newman's Day, Reunions and the P-rade), athletics (the first intercollegiate football game against Rutgers, Dick Kazmaier's Heisman, Pete Carril and the Princeton offense, Bill Bradley) and the alumni and faculty, from James Madison and F. Scott Fitzgerald to Michelle Obama, Jeff Bezos, Toni Morrison and Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study next door. Some questions are easy for anyone who has walked Nassau Street; others will test alumni who remember every arch sing. Every answer has been checked against primary sources, chiefly the Wikipedia articles on the university, its buildings and its teams, and each explanation adds one more detail. Play, see your score, and share it with the Tigers in your life.
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Q 01Under what name was Princeton founded in 1746?
College of New Jersey
College of New Jersey was the legal name for generations; the school took its town's name only when it was raised to a university in the 1890s.
Q 02In which New Jersey town did Princeton hold its first classes in 1747, in Jonathan Dickinson's parsonage?
Elizabeth
Elizabeth, then called Elizabethtown, was home for only a few months: Dickinson died that October and the students moved to Aaron Burr's parsonage in Newark.
Q 03When Princeton was founded in 1746, no college stood between New Haven and which Virginia town?
Williamsburg
Williamsburg, home of William & Mary, was a long trip by horse or stagecoach from New Haven, so the founders saw an urgent need for a college in the colonies between them.
Q 04What advantage led the future university to choose the village of Princeton as its permanent home in the 1750s?
A central location
A central location decided it: the royal governor backed the village as 'as near the center of the Province as any', and the college moved there from Newark in 1756.
Q 05Nassau Hall is named for which monarch?
William III of England
William III of England got the honor only because the colony's governor refused to let the trustees name the building after him and asked them to honor the late king of the House of Nassau.
Q 06Which Princeton president, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, led the college 1768–1794?
John Witherspoon
John Witherspoon left his parish in Scotland in 1768 to take the job, and he was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration.
Q 07A 1783 mutiny by unpaid soldiers drove Congress out of which city and into Princeton's Nassau Hall?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia was abandoned after troops demanding back pay surrounded the State House and Pennsylvania's government would not protect Congress, which then sat in Nassau Hall for about four months.
Q 08A cannonball at the Battle of Princeton reportedly 'decapitated' a Nassau Hall portrait of which king?
George II
George II reportedly lost his head to an American cannonball; in 1783 the trustees had Charles Willson Peale paint Washington and hung the picture in the king's empty frame.
Q 09Washington slipped away overnight from which New Jersey town, campfires still burning, to strike Princeton on January 3, 1777?
Trenton
Trenton was where Cornwallis expected to finish off the Americans at dawn; a token force kept the campfires going while the army marched round him to Princeton.
Q 10Which former US president became the first head of Princeton's alumni association in 1826?
James Madison
James Madison held the post for the rest of his life; the alumni were organised to raise money when the college's own president was close to shutting the struggling school.
Q 11Which president's tenure (1868–88) saw Princeton's Glee Club and first eating club founded?
James McCosh
James McCosh, a Scottish minister hired from Belfast, publicly defended Darwin's theory of evolution as no threat to faith.
Q 12Which phrase became Princeton's informal motto?
"In the Nation's Service"
"In the Nation's Service" headlined the 1896 celebration at which the college renamed itself a university; the motto was revised in 2016 to end 'and the service of humanity'.
Q 13Which future First Lady majored in sociology at Princeton?
Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama arrived in 1981, two years after her brother Craig, and wrote her senior thesis on how a Princeton education changed African American alumni's ties to their community.
Q 21Since 1911 the front entrance of Nassau Hall has been flanked by two bronze what?
Tigers
Tigers replaced a pair of lions: the Class of 1879 had given the lions, then swapped them once the tiger had taken over as the college's symbol.
Q 22The students who hauled Princeton's Big Cannon onto campus in the 1830s were led by which British prime minister's grandfather?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill's American grandfather, Leonard Jerome of the Class of 1839, led a crowd of students who carted the stranded gun to campus and dumped it in front of Nassau Hall.
Q 23Students from which neighboring university stole Princeton's Little Cannon in 1875?
Rutgers
Q 14What teaching innovation did Princeton's 13th president introduce in 1905?
The preceptorial system
The preceptorial system put students in small groups under young tutors called preceptors; hiring them took an ambitious alumni fundraising drive.
Q 15Which tycoon gave Princeton a rowing lake in 1906 and was reportedly told, 'We needed bread and you gave us cake'?
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie reportedly met a later request for money with "I have already given you a lake"; the bread-and-cake line was the university president's reported reply.
Q 16Princeton's Graduate College sits half a mile from campus because Dean West beat whom in a dispute?
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson wanted graduate students housed at the heart of campus, but the dean held out for a distant hilltop, and a donor's gift came on condition that the college be built off campus.
Q 17The tower crowning the Graduate College is a memorial to which former Princeton trustee and US president?
Grover Cleveland
Grover Cleveland retired to Princeton after the White House, joined the board and chaired its graduate school committee, backing the dean in the fight over where the college should stand.
Q 18Which physicist, often assumed to have taught at Princeton University, actually worked at the separate Institute for Advanced Study from 1933?
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein belonged to the independent Institute, but the mix-up is easy: for its first six years the Institute was housed in the university's own mathematics building.
Q 19Which architect, hired in 1907 to enforce Princeton's Collegiate Gothic style, also designed its University Chapel?
Ralph Adams Cram
Ralph Adams Cram designed the chapel to replace one that burned down in 1920, and also drew the Graduate College.
Q 20Which landscape architect shaped Princeton's grounds from 1912 to 1943?
Beatrix Farrand
Beatrix Farrand, the only woman among the founders of the American Society of Landscape Architects, chose plants that bloom in spring or fall, when students are on campus to see them.
Rutgers paid for it: Princeton students raided New Brunswick and made off with muskets, the two college presidents exchanged letters, and a joint faculty committee had to arrange the swap back.
Q 24Princeton lost the first intercollegiate football game in 1869, played with no carrying or throwing the ball, much like which modern sport?
Soccer
Soccer is the closer match, with 25 players a side kicking for goal. Each host set the rules: Princeton lost six goals to four away, then won the return game at home 8–0 a week later.
Q 25Which Princeton back won the 1951 Heisman Trophy?
Dick Kazmaier
Dick Kazmaier was then drafted by the Chicago Bears but turned down pro football altogether, heading to Harvard Business School instead.
Q 26Which coach led Princeton men's basketball from 1967 to 1996 and perfected the 'Princeton offense'?
Pete Carril
Pete Carril went out on an upset: in the 1996 NCAA tournament his patient, back-door-cutting side beat defending champion UCLA 43–41, his last college win.
Q 27Which future US senator was named Most Outstanding Player when Princeton reached the 1965 Final Four?
Bill Bradley
Bill Bradley then kept the NBA waiting: he put off a New York Knicks contract for two years to study at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, joining the team in 1967.
Q 28What are Princeton's colors?
Orange and black
Orange and black were never planned as a pair: students chose orange for their badges in the 1860s, printed them in black ink, and the pairing stuck by repetition.
Q 29Coach Fritz Crisler carried Princeton's helmet design to which school, where it became the famous winged helmet?
Michigan
Michigan got the design in 1938, repainted in maize and blue; one of his reasons was practical, since bold markings would help passers pick out their receivers downfield.
Q 30Which men's team won Princeton six national championships between 1992 and 2001?
Lacrosse
Lacrosse was a turnaround story: when coach Bill Tierney arrived in 1988, Princeton had gone more than twenty years without even a league title.