 <p>For select you need to use a special selector made available by JQuery: :selected</p> <p>So </p> <pre><code>$('#state option:selected').val() </code></pre> <p>is the current selected value.</p> <p>If you need the do something on the <em>select</em> elements themself you could do something like:</p> <pre><code>$('#select option:selected').parents('select').dosomething(...) </code></pre>