This paper describes a universal high-impact practices (HIPs) taxonomy for intentional design of engaging educational experiences. Our taxonomy provides explicit definitions for the quality elements that make HIPs engaging, thus providing a tool to increase parity across HIP experiences. It can be applied to any educational experience and provides milestones of increasing student engagement for each of the quality elements. This taxonomy can be used during the design or evaluation of a student learning experience, and at higher levels for curricular planning, program review, resource allocation, and "badging" of HIP courses.