140 free College & University trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free College & University trivia questions with answers. This university trivia quiz roams the world's campuses: the medieval origins of Bologna, al-Qarawiyyin, Oxford and Cambridge, the colonial colleges that became Harvard, William & Mary, Yale and Princeton, the eight Ivies, Stanford's grieving founders, MIT's mission, land-grant colleges, Rhodes Scholarships and the world's largest university by enrolment. It also has plenty of fun college trivia questions for students and alumni: where the word 'campus' was first used, what alma mater actually means, the first fraternity, the Boat Race, the mortarboard, the SAT's original name and the birth of the MOOC. Easy questions suit orientation-week icebreakers and dorm quiz nights; the harder ones on dates and founders will test faculty too. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 140 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which university, teaching since around 1088, is regarded as the oldest in continuous operation?
Bologna
In 1988, 430 rectors signed the Magna Charta Universitatum there to mark its 900th birthday.
Q 02In which city is al-Qarawiyyin, founded in 859 and cited by UNESCO as the world's oldest higher-learning institution?
Fez
It became a leading centre of learning in the Islamic Golden Age.
Q 03The word 'university' comes from the Latin universitas, meaning what?
A whole or community
The full phrase universitas magistrorum et scholarium meant a community of teachers and scholars.
Q 04Teaching at Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world, is documented as early as which year?
1096
A medieval legend that Alfred the Great founded it in the 9th century was believed until the 18th century.
Q 05By 2025, how many British prime ministers had been educated at Oxford?
31
Its Bodleian library group, with 11 million volumes on 120 miles of shelving, is Britain's second-largest library.
Q 06In which year was the University of Cambridge founded by scholars who had fled Oxford?
1209
Two Oxford scholars had been hanged by the town after the death of a local woman.
Q 07In which year was Harvard, the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, founded?
1636
It was named in 1639 for Puritan clergyman John Harvard, who left it £780 and 320 books.
Q 08Roughly how large is Harvard's endowment, the biggest of any university in the world?
Over $50 billion
Its alumni include several US presidents, 162 Nobel laureates and 188 living billionaires.
Q 09America's second-oldest college, chartered in 1693 and named for William III and Mary II, is in which state?
Virginia
Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and John Tyler all studied there.
Q 10Yale, founded in 1701, took its name in 1718 from Elihu Yale, who was asked for money to do what?
Construct a new building
Cotton Mather made the request; the school had begun life as the Collegiate School in Connecticut.
Q 11Which Yale secret society meets in a windowless Egypto-Doric 'tomb' built in 1856?
Skull and Bones
Yale's teams are the Bulldogs, and the mascot is a live dog named Handsome Dan.
Q 12Princeton was founded in 1746 under what name?
The College of New Jersey
Two bronze tigers have flanked its main entrance since 1911, replacing a pair of lions.
Q 13How many universities make up the Ivy League?
Eight
The name became official in 1954 with the athletic conference; all but Cornell were founded in colonial times.
Q 21What does the Latin phrase 'alma mater' literally mean?
Nourishing mother
Lucretius used it for an earth goddess; Cambridge put 'Alma Mater Cantabrigia' on a lactating figure in a mural crown.
Q 22Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest academic honour society in the US, was founded in 1776 at which college?
William & Mary
Five students held the first meeting on December 5, 1776; chapters reached Harvard and Yale in 1779.
Q 23The Kappa Alpha Society, the first purely social fraternity, was founded in 1825 at which Schenectady institution?
Union
The word 'sorority' was not used until 1874; earlier women's groups called themselves women's fraternities.
Q 14Which is the only Ivy League school not founded during the colonial period?
Cornell
The other seven make up seven of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the Revolution.
Q 15Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of whom?
Their only child
Leland Jr died aged 15; the university opened on the family's Palo Alto farm in 1891.
Q 16Which Stanford provost is called a "father of Silicon Valley" for urging students to start local tech firms?
Frederick Terman
Stanford's teams are the Cardinal, after the colour, and its unofficial mascot is a dancing tree.
Q 17MIT was founded in 1861 by which geologist?
William Barton Rogers
He wanted an institution to keep pace with rapid scientific advance; 105 Nobel laureates have since been affiliated with MIT.
Q 18In what year was the Rhodes Scholarship, which funds postgraduate study at Oxford, established?
1902
Cecil Rhodes set it up in the eighth and final version of his will.
Q 19The 1862 Morrill Act created which kind of American college?
Land-grant colleges
States received federal land to fund colleges teaching agriculture and the mechanical arts.
Q 20The world's largest university by enrolment, with more than three million students, is in which country?
India
Indira Gandhi National Open University was set up in 1985 with a budget of 20 million rupees.
Q 24The word 'campus', first used academically at Princeton in 1774, is Latin for what?
Field
At Princeton it referred to a large open space on the college grounds.
Q 25Which ancient Buddhist centre in Bihar is called the world's first residential university?
Nalanda
It operated for nearly a thousand years, from 427 CE to around 1400.
Q 26Which is Germany's oldest university, founded in 1386?
Heidelberg
It was the third university in the Holy Roman Empire after Prague and Vienna.
Q 27The Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, first held in 1829, is rowed on which river?
The Thames
The 4.2-mile course from Putney to Mortlake is more than three times an Olympic distance.
Q 28How many times had the men's Boat Race ended in a dead heat by 2025?
Once
Cambridge led the men's series 88 wins to 81 after the 2025 race and has been ahead since 1930.
Q 29For much of its history, what did the letters SAT stand for?
Scholastic Aptitude Test
The first one, in June 1926, was sat by 8,040 students, many applying to Yale and Smith.
Q 30In what year was the first SAT administered?
1926
Since 2007 every US four-year college requiring a test accepts either the SAT or the ACT.