Rutgers Trivia
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50 free Rutgers trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Rutgers is older than the United States, was named after a Revolutionary War colonel who donated a bell, and once had a rooster for a mascot that its own football coach called a chicken. This Rutgers trivia quiz covers the whole story: the 1766 charter from Benjamin Franklin's son, the first classes in a tavern, the 1869 game against Princeton that started college football, the campuses in New Brunswick, Piscataway, Newark and Camden, and the move to the Big Ten. You will also find questions on the people who passed through: Paul Robeson, Milton Friedman, Selman Waksman and streptomycin, Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the law faculty, James Gandolfini, Ray Rice and the Pandemonium in Piscataway. Difficulty runs from easy questions any Scarlet Knight can answer to expert-level details about the Cannon War, the alma mater rewrite and Adam Korsak's punting records. Every answer was checked against university histories and encyclopaedic sources before publishing, and each question is cited. Good for alumni gatherings, tailgates and New Jersey trivia nights.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Under what name was Rutgers originally chartered in 1766?
Queen's College
Rutgers was chartered in 1766 as Queen's College, honouring Queen Charlotte, wife of George III; King's College was the original name of Columbia.
Q 02New Jersey's last royal governor, who signed the 1766 charter, was the son of which Founding Father?
Benjamin Franklin
William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin, was royal governor of New Jersey from 1763 to 1776 and signed the 1766 charter; he stayed loyal to the Crown during the Revolution, unlike his famous father.
Q 03The college was founded by ministers of which denomination to train future clergy?
Dutch Reformed
Dutch Reformed ministers founded the college to train clergy; the tie survives in the motto 'Sol iustitiae et occidentem illustra', adapted from Utrecht University's in the Netherlands.
Q 04Rutgers is one of how many 'colonial colleges' chartered before the Revolution?
Nine
Nine colleges were chartered before the Revolution: Harvard, William & Mary, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Rutgers and Dartmouth; Rutgers and William & Mary are the only two that became public.
Q 05Where were the college's first classes held in 1771?
In a tavern
In a tavern, Frederick Frelinghuysen, the college's first tutor, taught the first classes in 1771; Old Queens, its first purpose-built home, was not begun until 1809.
Q 06Who was Henry Rutgers, for whom the college was renamed in 1825?
A Revolutionary War colonel
A Revolutionary War colonel in the New York militia, Henry Rutgers (1745–1830) was a wealthy Manhattan landowner and philanthropist; the trustees renamed the college for him in 1825.
Q 07Which two gifts from its namesake did the newly renamed college receive in 1826?
A bell and a $5,000 bond
A bell and a $5,000 bond came from Henry Rutgers in 1826; the bell was hung in the Old Queens cupola, and the bond's income steadied a college that had twice closed for want of money.
Q 08Rutgers became New Jersey's land-grant college in 1864 under which federal law?
The Morrill Act
The Morrill Act of 1862 funded land-grant colleges; New Jersey chose Rutgers in 1864, creating the Rutgers Scientific School with departments of agriculture, engineering and chemistry.
Q 09In which decade was Rutgers designated the State University of New Jersey by the legislature?
1940s
In the 1940s, a 1945 act of the legislature designated Rutgers the State University of New Jersey; a 1956 act completed the move to public control, though it kept some rights from its 1766 charter.
Q 10In what year did Rutgers' Board of Governors vote to admit women to Rutgers College?
1970
The Board of Governors voted in 1970 to open Rutgers College to women, and the first coeducational class enrolled in 1972. Women had studied at the New Jersey College for Women, later Douglass, since 1918.
Q 11Rutgers' historic core, including Old Queens, sits in which New Jersey city?
New Brunswick
The College Avenue Campus is close to downtown and the train station. Busch and Livingston lie across the river in Piscataway.
Q 12Which river separates the College Avenue campus from the Busch and Livingston campuses?
The Raritan
The Raritan separates the College Avenue campus from the Busch and Livingston campuses in Piscataway; the alma mater is 'On the Banks of the Old Raritan'.
Q 13Which sponsor's name did the Rutgers Athletic Center (RAC) take in 2021?
Jersey Mike's
Jersey Mike's, the New Jersey-born sandwich chain, bought the naming rights in 2021, and the trapezoidal RAC, home of the men's basketball team and famous for its noise, became Jersey Mike's Arena.
Q 21Which future star of a 1950s family sitcom was Rutgers' quarterback from 1924 to 1926?
Ozzie Nelson
Ozzie Nelson played quarterback for Rutgers before graduating in 1927, long before The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet made him a television fixture on ABC from 1952 to 1966.
Q 22Rutgers is 'the birthplace of college football' thanks to a game on November 6 of which year?
1869
On November 6, 1869, Rutgers beat Princeton 6–4 at home under rules adapted from England's 1863 Football Association code, which made the game closer to soccer than to modern football.
Q 23How many players did each side field in that first football game against Princeton?
25
Each side fielded 25 players; no throwing or running with the ball was allowed, and the match was decided over ten 'games', each ending with a goal, Rutgers winning six to four.
Q 14Rutgers' northern campus was formed in 1946 when it absorbed what?
The University of Newark
The University of Newark, itself a 1936 merger of several Newark schools, joined Rutgers in 1946 to form Rutgers–Newark; Rutgers–Camden followed in 1950 with the College of South Jersey and South Jersey Law School.
Q 15Which school did Governor Chris Christie try to merge Rutgers–Camden into in 2012?
Rowan
Rowan University in Glassboro was to absorb Rutgers–Camden under a 2012 plan backed by Governor Chris Christie; protests from Camden faculty, students and alumni killed it, and that year's restructuring act kept Rutgers–Camden in Rutgers.
Q 16Who became the first sitting US president to speak at a Rutgers commencement, in 2016?
Barack Obama
Barack Obama spoke at the May 15, 2016 commencement, the first sitting president to do so, as part of the university's 250th-anniversary celebrations, which culminated on November 10, 2016.
Q 17What was changed in the Rutgers alma mater in 2013?
A line about fathers sending sons to become men
A line about fathers sending sons to become men was rewritten in 2013: 'My father sent me to old Rutgers, and resolved that I should be a man' became 'From far and near we came to Rutgers'.
Q 18Rutgers' only official school colour is what?
Scarlet
Scarlet won out after the student newspaper argued for a striking colour whose ribbon was easy to buy; an earlier push for orange, honouring the Dutch heritage, failed, and trustees made scarlet official in 1900.
Q 19What was Rutgers' mascot from 1925 until 1955?
A fighting rooster
A fighting rooster called the Chanticleer, named for the rooster of the medieval Reynard the Fox tales, served from 1925 to 1955, but the link to 'being chicken' made it a punchline.
Q 20Which football coach dismissed the rooster mascot as 'a chicken' and bought the first knight costume in 1955?
Harvey Harman
The knight won a campus-wide vote over 'Queensmen', 'Red Lions' and 'Flying Dutchmen'. Today's costumed knight is called Sir Henry.
Q 24What did the Rutgers players wear in the 1869 game to tell themselves apart from Princeton?
Scarlet turbans and handkerchiefs
The habit stuck: it is the origin of the school colour that trustees made official in 1900.
Q 25Before the first football game, Rutgers and Princeton students had long feuded over what object?
A Revolutionary War cannon
A Revolutionary War cannon that Princeton students had hauled away from Rutgers' home town decades earlier fuelled the rivalry; the first football challenge gave Rutgers a chance at revenge.
Q 26What was Rutgers' first intercollegiate athletic event, in 1866?
A baseball game lost 40–2 to Princeton
A baseball game lost 40–2 to Princeton in 1866 was Rutgers' first contest against another college; the lopsided score helped stoke the rivalry that produced the first intercollegiate football game.
Q 27Rutgers and Princeton staged the first intercollegiate contest in what sport in 1972?
Ultimate Frisbee
The first intercollegiate Ultimate Frisbee game was played by Rutgers and Princeton on November 6, 1972, on the anniversary of their first football game, and Rutgers won 29–27.
Q 28In which year did Rutgers men's basketball reach the Final Four after an unbeaten regular season?
1976
In 1976 Rutgers went 31–0 before losing to Michigan in the national semifinal and to UCLA in the third-place game, finishing the season 31–2.
Q 29Rutgers officially joined which athletic conference on July 1, 2014, alongside Maryland?
Big Ten
Rutgers joined the Big Ten on July 1, 2014, alongside Maryland; before that it had played in the Big East from 1991 and spent the 2013–14 season in the American Athletic Conference.
Q 30What name did Rutgers' Piscataway football stadium take in a 2019 sponsorship deal?
SHI Stadium
SHI Stadium is the name the Piscataway stadium took in 2019 under a deal with the Somerset-based IT reseller SHI International, replacing the High Point Solutions Stadium name.