🎓

Graduation Cap Emoji 🎓

A black mortarboard with a tassel hanging off one side — that's the graduation-cap emoji. It marks actual graduations — high school, college, any diploma moment — and gets used more loosely for academic smarts, tagging whoever in the group chat is 'the smart one.'

What 🎓 means

A black cap with an averagely wide circular base that is roofed by a solid square structure, the top of which has a round knob-like protrusion holding a golden or yellow tassel with a long loop.

The 🎓 Graduation Cap emoji suggests the act of graduating from college, an educational course, or just about any milestone in one's career. This emoji signifies qualification, achievement, merit, education, and growth.

How and when to use it

If you're letting someone know that you're qualified enough to know what they mean or the subject they're talking about, use 🎓. For example, "Hey. I may not game for 36 hours straight. But I know what the heck you're talking about, kay? 🎓".
While reiterating the fact that you've mastered the art of something, you could use 🎓. For instance, "You're not aware?? Man, I've literally mastered the art of not giving a f*ck 🎓".
🎓 not only represents graduation but it also deeply aligns with the values of the word and the day - "I'm sorry. I wasn't exactly raised bad, I was just educated 🎓 You should get some too, it's pretty cool".
Use 🎓 to support social media content that falls into the categories of education; it could be a university repost, a news post on literacy/education, an informative post on online courses, etc.

Other Names

🎓 Graduation
🎓 Degree
🎓 Square Academic Cap
🎓 Black Graduation Cap
🎓 Mortarboard
🎓 Oxford Cap
🎓 Education
🎓 College
🎓 Graduate
🎓 University

🎓 in real conversations

What does 🎓 mean from a girl?

Usually the real thing — a diploma landing, a defense finally over, a program finished after years of work. "Officially done 🎓" is a caption for graduation day itself, not a stand-in for being clever in general. That second reading exists — the cap does get pinned on the friend who always knows the answer — but on the day itself it's the milestone being marked, nothing subtler than that.

Is 🎓 different from 👩‍🎓?

Yes — 🎓 is just the cap and tassel on its own, standing for the milestone or education broadly, while 👩‍🎓 and its counterpart 👨‍🎓 show an actual graduate in cap and gown, closer to "here's a person who graduated" than "here's graduation." Announcing your own diploma, the plain cap does the job fine on its own.

Who in the group chat usually gets called 🎓?

Whoever actually did the reading — the one who remembers due dates, finds the citation nobody else bothered to look up, or answers the trivia question correctly without googling it. "Ask 🎓 over here" is a compliment wearing a joke's clothing, aimed at the group's unofficial smart one.

The lowdown

Category: Objects › clothing
Codepoints: U+1F393
Emoji version: Emoji 0.6
Shortcodes: :mortar_board:
Keywords: cap, celebration, clothing, education, graduation, hat, scholar

How it looks across platforms

Seeing a blank box instead of the emoji somewhere? Here's why that happens. Curious why the designs above don't match to begin with? Here's why that happens too.