50 free UCLA trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free UCLA trivia questions with answers. UCLA started as a teachers' college on Vermont Avenue, moved to a Westwood bean field in 1929 and became the most applied-to university in America. This quiz covers the campus and its history: the four original Romanesque buildings, the Janss brothers' cut-price land deal, the Nobel laureates, the room in Boelter Hall where the internet sent its first two letters, and the Bruin nickname that Berkeley students donated. Sports fans get plenty: John Wooden's ten titles and 88-game streak, Pauley Pavilion, the record 126 NCAA team championships, the Olympic medal count, and the USC rivalry with its railroad-locomotive Victory Bell. There are also questions on the alumni, from Jackie Robinson and Arthur Ashe to Ralph Bunche, Francis Ford Coppola and the Doors, and on campus traditions like Spring Sing and Joe and Josephine Bruin. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the university, the Bruins and their people, and each question carries its source. Difficulty runs from things every applicant knows to details only a Bruin alum would remember.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What are UCLA's official school colours?
True blue and gold
Cardinal and gold belong to the crosstown rival; the fight songs are 'Sons of Westwood' and 'Mighty Bruins'.
Q 02In what year did the Los Angeles State Normal School become the Southern Branch of the University of California?
1919
That made it the second UC campus after Berkeley; the Southern Branch opened that September with 250 junior-college students and 1,250 teacher trainees.
Q 03Before Westwood, the campus was on Vermont Avenue in East Hollywood, on land now occupied by what?
Los Angeles City College
The school moved there in 1914 and had outgrown its 25 acres by the mid-1920s.
Q 04The Janss Steps are named for the brothers who sold the Westwood land for how much?
$1 million, under a third of its value
The developers Edwin and Harold Janss knew a university would lift the value of everything they owned around it.
Q 05The Westwood campus opened to students in which year?
1929
The first classes were held with 5,500 students in four buildings arranged around a quad.
Q 06Which of these was one of the four original buildings around the Westwood quad?
Haines Hall
The others were Royce Hall, the College Library (now Powell) and the Physics-Biology Building, now Kaplan Hall.
Q 07The twin towers of Royce Hall reference which famous Italian church?
Sant'Ambrogio in Milan
The building is Lombard Romanesque, a style chosen over Collegiate Gothic to suit the Mediterranean-like climate.
Q 08Royce Hall is named after Josiah Royce, who was what?
A philosopher
He was California-born and took his bachelor's degree at Berkeley in 1875.
Q 09The 'Bruins' nickname was offered to the Southern Branch by the student council of which school?
UC Berkeley
Berkeley's teams were the Golden Bears; the offer came after UCLA joined the Pacific Coast Conference in 1926.
Q 10The earliest known UCLA mascot, found by a gardener in 1917, was what?
A stray dog named Rags
The school rented live bears in the 1930s, including a Himalayan cub called Little Joe who was sent to a circus when he grew too big.
Q 11What are the names of UCLA's costumed bear mascots?
Joe and Josephine Bruin
The fight songs are 'Sons of Westwood' and 'Mighty Bruins'; the alma mater is 'Hail to the Hills of Westwood'.
Q 12For fall 2022 UCLA received how many undergraduate applications, the most of any US university?
About 175,000
The exact figure was 174,914, including transfers.
Q 13The first ARPANET message was sent from UCLA in 1969 to which institution?
Stanford Research Institute
The system crashed after two letters, so the first transmitted characters were 'lo'.
Q 21As of 2026, UCLA's 126 NCAA team championships trailed only which school?
Stanford
The Bruins were the first school to reach 100 NCAA titles, when the women's water polo team won in 2007.
Q 22How many Olympic gold medals had Bruins won as of the university's count of 284 total medals?
141
UCLA has had a gold medallist at every Olympics the US has attended since 1932.
Q 23Where do the Bruins play their home games on the gridiron?
The Rose Bowl in Pasadena
The team's only national title came in 1954, when rules kept it out of a Rose Bowl showdown with Ohio State.
Q 14That first ARPANET connection was made from a computer in room 3420 of which UCLA building?
Boelter Hall
The machine was an SDS Sigma 7, and the network's very first node was run from that building.
Q 15Which UCLA professor developed packet-network theory and hosted the ARPANET's first node?
Leonard Kleinrock
His students Steve Crocker and Jon Postel went on to write the network's early protocols.
Q 16Bunche Hall is named for the UCLA alumnus who won the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for what?
Negotiating an Arab-Israeli armistice
A bust of Ralph Bunche at the entrance looks out over the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden.
Q 17As of 2025, how many Nobel laureates does UCLA count among its faculty and alumni?
19
Also 11 Rhodes scholars, 10 astronauts, 3 Turing Award winners and 7 Pulitzer winners.
Q 18UCLA pharmacologist Louis Ignarro shared the 1998 Nobel for discovering the signalling role of which molecule?
Nitric oxide
The gas turned out to be one of the most important molecules in cardiopulmonary physiology.
Q 19UCLA's medical school is named after which entertainment mogul?
David Geffen
The health system's flagship hospital is named after Ronald Reagan.
Q 20The Bruins joined which athletic conference after the Pac-12 broke up?
The Big Ten
The move put a Los Angeles school in a conference that was for a century a Midwestern institution.
Q 24How many NCAA men's basketball titles did John Wooden win at UCLA?
10
All in a 12-year span from 1964 to 1975, including a record seven in a row; Jim Harrick added an 11th in 1995.
Q 25What was John Wooden's nickname?
The Wizard of Westwood
His teams also set a men's college record with 88 consecutive wins.
Q 26John Wooden was the first person inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in which two categories?
Player and coach
As a college guard he had been the first three-time All-American; his 'Pyramid of Success' became a business-school staple.
Q 27Where did John Wooden play his own college basketball?
Purdue
His 1932 team was retroactively named national champion by the Helms Foundation.
Q 28Which architect designed Pauley Pavilion (1965) and shaped much of the modern campus?
Welton Becket
The regent Edwin Pauley matched the alumni's contributions to get it built; the arena was renovated in 2010-12.
Q 29Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played at UCLA under what name?
Lew Alcindor
His arrival as a sophomore All-American in 1967 relaunched the Bruins' dynasty.
Q 30How many times has the UCLA men's basketball team finished a season undefeated, an NCAA record?
4
In 1964, 1967, 1972 and 1973; the program also holds the record of 11 NCAA titles.