Why must a product of symmetric random variables be symmetric? text(); To get selected text jQuery("select option . @Perplexor yes, it won't work with keys, otherwise it will store each values every time you press the key. HTMLSelectElement.options The HTMLSelectElement.options read-only property returns a HTMLOptionsCollection of the <option> elements contained by the <select> element. OP said that didn't work for them: "I tried the methods below but they all return the selected index instead of the value: Great answer, thank you! Using the clone() method stores a copy of the select instead of an instance of it. Change the selected value of a drop-down list with jQuery, Get selected value in dropdown list using JavaScript. So what *is* the Latin word for chocolate? Where should I put