97 Fun Facts About Graduation

Which Latin word meaning 'step' gives English the word 'degree'?

Gradus, Latin for 'step', reached English as 'degree' through Old French degré, and the same root makes a graduate, literally, someone who has taken a step.

The square academic cap gets its common nickname from its resemblance to a tool used by whom?

Bricklayers carry mortar on a flat square board called a hawk, and the flat square top of the academic cap earned it the nickname mortarboard.

In American commencements, undergraduates typically begin with the tassel on which side of the cap?

Right is the starting side: the tassel hangs on the right of the cap until the degree is conferred, then graduates move it to the left.

In 1895, an intercollegiate commission standardised what for American colleges?

Academic dress got one shared code; the commission's technical adviser, Gardner Cotrell Leonard, was himself a gown-maker, a partner in the Albany family firm that went on to supply caps and gowns to many universities.

How many velvet bands appear on the sleeves of an American doctoral gown?

Three velvet bars cross each sleeve of the American doctoral gown, matching the velvet facings down its front; doctors may also swap the mortarboard for a velvet tam.

What do the lining colours of an American academic hood show?

The university: the lining carries the colours of the institution that granted the degree, while the velvet trim shows the field of study, so a practised eye can read where the wearer studied and what.

Under the American code, which tassel colour is reserved for those entitled to wear the doctoral gown?

Gold is kept by the code for doctors, with everyone else in black or a subject colour; at the old English universities a gold tassel, the 'tuft', marked a titled undergraduate, hence 'tuft-hunter' for a toady who courts the grand.

Which colour does the American code assign to science?

Golden yellow is the code's colour for science; green marks medicine, purple law and white arts and letters.

What practical job did the academic gown probably do for medieval scholars?

To keep the wearer warm is the usual account: medieval scholars, most of them clerics, are thought to have needed long robes and hoods against the cold of unheated halls.

Who composed the Pomp and Circumstance marches, a staple of American graduations?

Edward Elgar wrote five Pomp and Circumstance marches between 1901 and 1930; the slow tune from the first was reused in his ode for Edward VII's coronation before any graduating class marched to it.

At which university was Pomp and Circumstance first played at a graduation ceremony, in 1905?

Yale gave the composer an honorary doctorate of music that day and played his march as the graduates filed out; Princeton, Chicago and Columbia soon copied it, and the habit spread from there.

The trio tune of Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 is better known in Britain by what name?

Land of Hope and Glory gained its words from A. C. Benson in 1902, reportedly after Edward VII said the melody would make a great song; it is now sung at the Last Night of the Proms.

The word 'valedictorian' comes from a Latin phrase meaning what?

To say farewell is the sense of Latin 'vale dicere', and it fits the job: the valedictorian traditionally gives the last speech of the ceremony, the class's goodbye before it scatters.

In Australia, what Latin title is given to the highest-ranking student in a graduating class?

Dux, Latin for 'leader', was a Roman commander's title long before schools in Australia, New Zealand and Scotland borrowed it for their top pupil; the same word gave English 'duke'.

What does 'magna cum laude' translate to?

With great praise is the middle rung, above plain cum laude and below summa; one New England college set up the three as grades around 1881 so that it could stop ranking every student on a scale of a hundred.

What does the title of the traditional academic song 'Gaudeamus igitur' mean?

So let us rejoice opens a student song also known as 'On the Shortness of Life': it tells the young to enjoy themselves while they can, which made it a favourite drinking song before it became an anthem.

Which composer quoted 'Gaudeamus igitur' in the finale of his Academic Festival Overture?

Johannes Brahms wrote the Academic Festival Overture in 1880 to thank the University of Breslau for an honorary doctorate, and Gaudeamus igitur crowns its finale.

A graduation is called a 'commencement' because medieval graduates were beginning what?

Their careers as masters: in a medieval university the ceremony marked a new master's 'inception', the start of his licence to teach, so it celebrated a beginning rather than an end.

Which economic programme was announced in a June 1947 commencement address at a Massachusetts university?

The Marshall Plan was outlined by Secretary of State George C. Marshall in his June 5, 1947 address; Congress funded it as the European Recovery Program in 1948.

Steve Jobs closed his 2005 Stanford speech with 'Stay hungry, stay foolish', a sign-off line from which publication?

The Whole Earth Catalog printed the words beneath a photo of an empty country road on the back cover of its final issue; Jobs told the graduates it had been 'sort of like Google in paperback form'.

David Foster Wallace's celebrated 2005 commencement speech 'This Is Water' was delivered where?

Kenyon College's students chose Wallace as their 2005 speaker from a shortlist that included then-Senator Hillary Clinton; the speech spread online and was published as a book in 2009.

The 'Wear Sunscreen' speech often credited to Vonnegut was really a 1997 newspaper column by whom?

Mary Schmich wrote it as a mock commencement speech on June 1, 1997; a chain email then credited it to Kurt Vonnegut, who said he would have been proud had the words been his.

Which film director turned the 'Wear Sunscreen' column into a single that topped the UK chart in 1999?

Baz Luhrmann set the column to a choral remix of a dance hit as 'Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)', with voice actor Lee Perry reading the advice, and it entered the British chart at number one.

What does 'honoris causa', attached to an honorary degree, mean?

For the sake of the honour means no course or exams were asked of the recipient; one of the earliest on record went at Oxford in the late 1470s to Lionel Woodville, brother of Edward IV's queen.

Which Muppet received an honorary doctorate from Southampton College in 1996?

Kermit the Frog collected an honorary Doctorate of Amphibious Letters at the Long Island college's 1996 commencement and delivered the graduation address himself.

Which of these American universities has, on principle, never awarded an honorary degree?

MIT has never given one: founder William Barton Rogers dismissed honorary degrees as 'literary almsgiving ... of spurious merit and noisy popularity', and the institute has held that line since its first graduation in 1868.

Which Founding Father called himself 'Doctor' after honorary doctorates from St Andrews and Oxford?

Benjamin Franklin received an honorary doctorate from St Andrews in 1759 and another from Oxford in 1762; he never attended a university, yet 'Dr Franklin' stuck for life.

The research doctorate first awarded in America in 1861 was modelled on the universities of which country?

Germany: the modern PhD grew out of the research university founded in Berlin in 1810, and Americans crossed the Atlantic to earn one until a college at home began awarding its own in 1861.

At which Italian university did the Venetian Elena Cornaro Piscopia become the first woman PhD in 1678?

Padua's cathedral hosted the ceremony on 25 June 1678; she had sought a degree in theology, but the local bishop refused it to a woman and allowed her philosophy instead.

Which is the oldest university in Europe in continuous operation?

Bologna dates its founding to 1088; its students organised themselves into guilds, the original 'universitas', and hired their own professors.

Which Ohio college, the oldest coeducational college in the United States, admitted four women to its degree course in 1837?

Oberlin also admitted Black students on an equal footing, and college and town became a station on the Underground Railroad; in 1862 Mary Jane Patterson graduated there, the first Black woman in the country to earn a B.A.

The tradition of tossing caps in the air at graduation began in 1912 at which institution?

Annapolis midshipmen of 1912 were commissioned as officers the moment they graduated, so they flung their now-useless midshipman caps into the air and the custom spread.

The tradition of the class ring originated with the class of 1835 at which school?

West Point's class of 1835 wore the first class rings; by tradition the insignia faces the wearer until graduation and is turned outward afterwards.

What does 'alma mater', the Latin name graduates give their old school, literally mean?

Nourishing mother is the literal sense of alma mater, a title ancient Romans gave to mother goddesses such as Ceres before universities adopted it for themselves.

In Finland, doctors in some faculties receive what unusual item along with their doctoral hat?

A sword goes with the hat in Finland alone: a new doctor cannot take part in the conferment ceremony without both, though doctors of theology traditionally carry no blade.

The Abitur, sat at the end of secondary school, is named from a Latin word for someone about to do what?

Go away: 'abiturus' is the future participle of Latin abire, 'to go away', so an Abiturient is literally someone on the point of leaving; Prussia made the exam official in 1788.

Which French ruler created the baccalauréat, the exam that still ends secondary school in France?

Napoleon Bonaparte recast it by a decree of 17 March 1808: the baccalaureate had begun as a degree of the medieval universities, and he turned it into the exam that closes secondary school.

Roughly how many students registered for China's gaokao university entrance exam in 2023?

About 13 million: a then-record 12.91 million signed up in 2023 for an exam that was scrapped during the Cultural Revolution and brought back only in late 1977.

Which famous dropout returned to his old university in May 2017 to give the commencement speech and receive an honorary degree?

Mark Zuckerberg, who quit in 2004 to build Facebook, opened by joking that getting through the speech would be the first time he had actually finished something at his old university.

In which country do school-leavers called 'russ' spend weeks partying in coloured overalls each spring?

Norway: the russ celebrate from late April to Constitution Day on 17 May, and the oddity is the timing, since the weeks of partying normally come before their final exams, not after.

What is the term for receiving a degree without attending the graduation ceremony?

Graduation in absentia, Latin for 'in absence', confers the degree in full without the graduate present; courts use the same phrase when someone is tried without being in the room.

In the 1967 film The Graduate, what one word of career advice does Mr McGuire give new graduate Benjamin?

Plastics: the one-word tip ranks 42nd on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest movie quotes, well ahead of the film's own 'Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me' at 63rd.

The square academic cap is thought to have developed from which hat worn by Roman Catholic clergy?

Biretta is the stiff, ridged cap of Catholic clergy from which the academic cap is thought to descend; clerics and scholars wore the same dress in the medieval universities.

What name does Oxford give the formal dark clothing worn under the gown for exams?

Subfusc, from the Latin for 'brownish', is the dark suit or skirt and white shirt worn under the gown; in a 2015 referendum about three in four Oxford students voted to keep it compulsory for exams.

The march title 'Pomp and Circumstance' comes from a line in which Shakespeare play?

Othello supplies the phrase in Act 3, Scene 3, where the general, convinced his wife has betrayed him, gives up 'pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war' along with his peace of mind.

Why are American diplomas still nicknamed 'sheepskins'?

They were once written on parchment, the scraped skin of a sheep; paper took over long ago, but dictionaries still list 'sheepskin' as an informal word for a diploma.

What do many women wear with a kimono at Japanese university graduation ceremonies?

Hakama, pleated skirt-like trousers, are rarely worn by women now except at graduations and in sports such as archery; many female teachers wear them to the ceremony too, as Western professors don gowns.

Which Dr. Seuss book, the last published in his lifetime, is a perennial bestselling graduation gift?

Oh, the Places You'll Go! sees its sales spike every April to June, as families in the United States and Canada buy it for graduates from kindergarten through college.

Admiral William McRaven's viral 2014 commencement speech urged graduates to begin each day by doing what?

Making their bed was the first of ten lessons from Navy SEAL training that McRaven gave the University of Texas class, and he later expanded the speech into the bestselling book Make Your Bed.

Steven Spielberg completed his long-unfinished Cal State Long Beach film degree by presenting which of his own movies?

Schindler's List, already the winner of seven Academy Awards, was the work he presented in 2002 to complete his Bachelor of Arts in Film and Electronic Media.

South Korea halts what during the English listening section of the Suneung, its national college entrance exam?

Flights are grounded so that aircraft noise cannot disturb students during the listening test, on a day when many banks, shops and construction projects also close or pause.

University graduates in Argentina are traditionally ambushed in the street by loved ones who pelt them with what?

Eggs and flour, along with other messy food, are hurled at new graduates in Argentina and Uruguay, in street parties rowdy enough to draw complaints from neighbours and shopkeepers.

Which NBA legend earned a doctorate in education from Florida's Barry University in 2012?

Shaquille O'Neal added the doctorate to a bachelor's degree from Louisiana State University and an online MBA, all earned after his NBA career had begun.

Which rapper's third album, Graduation, went head-to-head with 50 Cent's Curtis when both were released on the same day?

Kanye West saw Graduation debut at number one with over 957,000 copies sold in its first week, and the publicity around the showdown lifted both albums to record-breaking sales.

Queen guitarist Brian May completed a PhD in 2007, for work he had started in 1971, in which subject?

Astrophysics was May's field at Imperial College London, where he had studied reflected light from interplanetary dust in the early 1970s before setting the degree aside for decades.

The American high-school prom, a formal dance for graduating students, takes its name from which longer word?

Promenade is the full word, and in the early days of high-school proms the dance worked much like a debutante ball: a teenager's first adult social event.

Which heavyweight boxing champion was awarded an honorary doctorate by Ohio's Central State University in 1989?

Mike Tyson was made a Doctor of Humane Letters, with the university praising the hard work, determination and perseverance he had shown in overcoming obstacles.

Which punk band's acoustic ballad Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) became a staple of proms and graduation playlists?

Green Day were surprised when the 1997 single from their album Nimrod became a prom hit, because graduating seniors heard its words as nostalgia for their school years.

Which actor played aimless new college graduate Benjamin Braddock in the 1967 film The Graduate?

Dustin Hoffman won the part after Robert Redford screen-tested for it, because director Mike Nichols felt Redford lacked the underdog quality the character needed.

Which novelist's 2008 commencement address on the benefits of failure was later published as the book Very Good Lives?

J. K. Rowling called the talk The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination, and it appeared in book form in 2015 with illustrations by Joel Holland.

Which US president used a 1963 commencement address at American University to announce nuclear test ban talks?

John F. Kennedy titled the address A Strategy of Peace and used it to suspend American atmospheric nuclear tests for as long as other nations did the same.

Hotaru no Hikari, heard at Japanese graduation ceremonies, borrows the melody of which Scottish song?

Auld Lang Syne was given entirely new Japanese words under a title meaning glow of a firefly, and the 1881 song is also played at the end of the school day.

New university graduates in Italy spend the rest of their graduation day wearing a wreath of which plant?

Laurel explains the Italian vocabulary too: the degree ceremony is the laurea and a graduate is a laureato, in a custom that spread to every Italian university over the last two centuries.

Canadian engineering graduates receive an iron ring in a ritual written in the 1920s by which British author?

Rudyard Kipling was asked to write the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer partly because of his poem The Sons of Martha, which paid tribute to an engineer.

Vitamin C's 2000 hit Graduation (Friends Forever) builds its string arrangement on which Baroque piece?

Pachelbel's Canon in D supplies the strings, and the single also features a vocal appearance by the NYC All-City Chorus.

Who graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904 as the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree?

Helen Keller was 24 when she graduated, having studied at both specialist and mainstream schools, and she went on to become a celebrated author and campaigner.

Who became the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, graduating in January 1849?

Elizabeth Blackwell was rejected by every medical school she applied to except Geneva Medical College in New York, where the male students voted to admit her as a joke.

What title do American high schools give the graduate who ranks second in the class?

Salutatorian reflects the salutation, the greeting that opens the ceremony, and at two of America's oldest universities a student still delivers that address in Latin.

The 'Ph' in PhD stands for which word, whatever subject the doctorate was actually earned in?

Philosophy is meant in its original Greek sense, love of wisdom, which is why a chemist or a historian can hold the degree without ever studying the academic discipline.

Which Harry Potter star graduated from Brown University in 2014 with a degree in English literature?

Emma Watson spent 2011 to 2014 splitting her time between film work and her studies in Providence, Rhode Island, before collecting her Bachelor of Arts.

Who is the only US president to have earned a PhD, awarded by Johns Hopkins University in 1886?

Woodrow Wilson took his doctorate in history and government, then taught at several colleges and ran a university before he ever held political office.

Robert F. Smith used a 2019 commencement speech to pay off the graduates' student loans at which Atlanta college?

Morehouse heard the billionaire's pledge on 19 May 2019, a few months after Smith had given the college $1.5 million for a scholars programme and a campus park.

Which Disney franchise sent Troy and Gabriella to their graduation in Senior Year, its only cinema release?

High School Musical reached cinemas with its third film in 2008, and Disney diverted a larger production and marketing budget to it to suit the big screen.

In which 1978 film do the seniors of Rydell High end the school year at a graduation carnival?

Grease closes at the carnival, where Rizzo discovers she is not pregnant and gets back together with Kenickie.

In which 1995 comedy must Adam Sandler's character repeat grades 1 through 12 to inherit the family hotel company?

Billy Madison gets two weeks for each grade, and at his graduation he hands the company to a loyal operations manager instead of running it himself.

Which pop star received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from New York University in May 2022?

Taylor Swift did more than collect the degree: she also served as the university's commencement speaker that day, addressing the graduating class.

Graduating doctors at many US medical schools swear a modern oath named after which ancient Greek physician?

Hippocrates gave his name to the earliest expression of medical ethics in the Western world, and by 2000 every US medical school administered some kind of professional oath.

Lyndon Johnson set out the goals of which domestic programme at the University of Michigan's 1964 graduation exercises?

The Great Society speech followed an honorary Doctor of Civil Law for the president, and almost immediately 14 task forces began studying nearly every major aspect of American society.

Which author's 2012 commencement speech at Philadelphia's University of the Arts became the book Make Good Art?

Neil Gaiman gave the speech on 17 May 2012, the year the university awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Arts, and an 80-page text version was published in 2013.

New doctors at Germany's University of Göttingen traditionally climb a fountain to kiss a statue of whom?

A goose girl, the Gänseliesel, still gets the kisses, although police banned climbing her fountain in 1926 and a law student was prosecuted for kissing her that same year.

At Coimbra's Queima das Fitas festival, Portuguese students celebrate the end of their courses by burning what?

Ribbons representing each faculty go up in flames at the festival, first organised by Coimbra students in the 1850s and now among the biggest student festivities in Europe.

What nickname do Australians give the week-long holiday that Year 12 leavers take after their final exams?

Schoolies has drawn school-leavers to the Queensland coast since at least the 1970s, and older revellers who graduated in an earlier year are nicknamed toolies.

The word 'diploma' comes from a Greek term that originally described what kind of object?

A folded paper, one doubled over, was the Greek sense, and the Romans used the word for an official letter of recommendation given to people travelling to the provinces.

Cambridge students once gave which kitchen utensil to the lowest scorer to still pass the maths honours exam?

A wooden spoon went to the last-placed candidate until results began to be listed alphabetically from 1910, which made it impossible to tell who had come bottom.

Which shock-rock act's 1972 anthem School's Out became their biggest international hit and a UK number one?

Alice Cooper built the song around the last few minutes of the final day of school, and it also reached number seven on the Billboard Hot 100.

Which folk-rock duo recorded the soundtrack to the 1967 film The Graduate, including the hit single Mrs. Robinson?

Simon & Garfunkel took the single to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and in 1969 it became the first rock song to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year.

Which 1994 film's hero wins a University of Alabama football scholarship, graduates, and then enlists in the US Army?

Forrest Gump earns the scholarship by accident, after he blunders into a team practice session and is noticed by the coach, Bear Bryant.

In British universities, what is a student called who has finished a degree but not yet been awarded it?

A graduand is the term used in the UK, Canada and the wider Commonwealth, and the word has been recorded in English only since 1882.

Alexander Twilight became the first African American to earn a US bachelor's degree at which Vermont college in 1823?

Middlebury only publicised his degree after a rival college claimed the first African American graduate in 1826, and Twilight later became the first elected to a state legislature.

Which actor made her feature directing debut with Booksmart, a 2019 comedy set on the eve of high-school graduation?

Olivia Wilde directed Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever as two graduating students who set out to finally break the rules and party on their last day of classes.

Which academic honour society, the oldest in the United States, was founded at the College of William & Mary in 1776?

Phi Beta Kappa held its first meeting on 5 December 1776, when five students gathered in Williamsburg, Virginia, and chose John Heath as their president.

Which word names the formal process of entering a university, the bookend to graduation at the other end of a degree?

Matriculation is often marked by a ceremony of its own, and new students at some colleges sign a register while wearing academic dress.

St Petersburg marks the end of the school year each summer with a tall ship flying sails of which colour?

Scarlet sails come from a 1923 romantic novel by Alexander Grin, and the tradition began in 1968 when several Leningrad schools joined together to celebrate.

Seniors at which Massachusetts women's college race rolling hoops in their graduation robes each spring?

Wellesley seniors often inherit the hoop from an older student, and in the early 20th century the winner was said to be the first in her class to marry.

The GED high-school equivalency tests were first developed in 1942 for which group of Americans?

Military personnel and veterans who had enlisted before finishing high school used the tests to show what they knew, after the United States Armed Forces Institute asked for them.

Which 1985 film follows a clique of friends adjusting to adult life after graduating from Georgetown University?

St. Elmo's Fire had to be shot away from the real campus, because Georgetown's administrators refused permission to film there and cited the story's questionable content.

Which display team has a standing engagement to fly over the US Air Force Academy's annual graduation ceremony?

Thunderbirds jets are timed to cross Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs at the moment the new officers throw their hats into the air, one of the Air Force squadron's standing engagements.