ALBANY, N.Y. - Students who rely on all-nighters to bring up their grades might want to sleep on that strategy: A new survey says those who never study all night have slightly higher GPAs than those who do.

A survey of 120 students at St. Lawrence University, a small liberal arts college in northern New York, found that students who have never pulled an all-nighter have average GPAs of 3.2, compared to 2.95 for those who have. The study, by assistant professor of psychology Pamela Thacher, is to be included in the January issue of Behavioral Sleep Medicine.

more on the link...

All-nighters may not improve grades - Yahoo! News

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Posterior Fornix!

Me fail English? That's unpossible. - Ralph Wiggum

so they are using a pool of kids from a small liberal arts college in northern NY?

illogical.

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But remember that, even when those who move you be kings or men of power, your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God you cannot say "but I was told by others to do thus" or that "virtue was not convenient at the time." This will not suffice. Remember that.

Well, we don't know the background of the study or the reasoning for using such a small sample size. Maybe it was part of a project or some other type of classwork? I mean, in order to understand on a broader level the implications of a study have you must look at the source of the sample:

a) do these kids have other circumstances which make them get these GPAs aside from just staying up all night.

b) What are the relative IQs or the study habits of those who don't do the all-nighters vs. those who do.

c) Is there a method to change this incidence of lower GPAs such as implementation of a study skills/time management course.

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B.S. Boston University Medical School(Biomed)
A.L.B. Harvard University(Biology)

what a dumb study. it could be the fact that those students who didn't pull all-nighters have better time management skills and has nothing to do with the actual act of staying up all night to study.

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I'm like Internationally-known

yea that was a dumb study. im sure those liberal arts students studying pottery and prose are top notch. it would have been interesting to include a school that has much more science and engineering majors in it.

personally, i can't do all nighters anymore. sleep is key to memory....i dont know too many who pull all nighters in med school, especially with our marathon block exams!

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AUC 5th Semester
Undergrad: UC Riverside

Wasn't there that study that showed that memory was better cemented with sleep?

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Indeed, I believe there have been umpteen such studies; some of them have been very well controlled etc. - there was one published in Nature a couple (?) of years ago.

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"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
Samuel Beckett, "Worstward Ho", 1983

Which is why I try to get 15 hours of sleep a day

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i cut myself off at Ross at 11pm. no matter what. I did very well. it is all about tiem management. i also manged to scuba dive about 200 times while there(ok, i spent a couple breaks there too). but i ALWAYS dove the day before an exam, and immediately after an exam. relaxation helps memory too!

People who engage in allnighters are usually too fatigued to do well on an exam. I tried an allnighter only once, for a term paper. There are some people who freak out on tests as well.