August 23, 2012 12:09 pm
Go to Sleep, All-Nighter Cram Fests Don’t Work
Photo: English106
That collective groan you’re hearing across the country means it can only be one time of year. No, not election season, back to school time. Classes are starting soon, and science offers some advice just in time for the new year: skip the all night cramming sessions for tests. New research indicates that cramming doesn’t help, and students should just get some sleep instead.
Caffeine-fueled all nighters are practically a rite of passage for today’s students. Yet the study points out that these sleepless, frenzied attempts to make up for procrastination are counterproductive. Every hour of sleep lost impacts performance the next day, regardless of how rigorously the student pored over her books the night before.
In the new study, 535 high school 9th, 10th and 12th graders in Los Angeles kept a diary for 14 days that recorded how long they studied and slept, and whether or not they had any trouble understanding something in class the next day. They also reported how they performed on tests, quizes and homework. For nearly all of the students, the researchers found that, counterintuitively, more study time correlated with worse academic performance. The connection, however, rested in the amount of sleep the students got: more studying tended to equal sacrificed sleep.
The researchers point out that in 9th grade, the average adolescent sleeps 7.6 hours per night, then declines to 7.3 hours in 10th grade, 7.0 hours in 11th grade and 6.9 hours in 12th grade.
For students, the key for a successful academic career seems to be figuring out a way to keep a constant schedule. Of course, socializing, having an after school job or participating in a sports team cuts into would-be study hours, and thus into sleep. Besides “sacrificing time spent on other, less essential activities,” the researchers don’t offer much of a solution for balancing already crammed days to ensure adequate sleep. If only high school started at 10 am instead of 7:15.
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Managed to get 4.0 pulling lots of all-niters. I think it depends on the individual
Comment by Arm — August 24, 2012 @ 11:15 am
Great article, but…”pored over her books,” not “poured over her books.”
Comment by Brooke — August 25, 2012 @ 1:44 am
@Brooke – Thanks for pointing that out, fixed now.
Comment by Rose Eveleth — August 25, 2012 @ 9:15 am
This research is wrong. I found in college that all night cramming just before an exam does work well and lead to better grades. This does not meant that one learned more but simply that key information is at the front of the mind and can be regurgitated rapidly, which is the key to passing essay-tyoe exams. This does not mean better education overall but simply that one can perform effectively on exams. Much of the information acquired by cramming is lost quickly but it is available when needed to score well on the exam.
Comment by Don Jameson — August 26, 2012 @ 10:57 am
College, for me, was about learning how to be an adult, about making connections with like-minded folk, about problem solving in teams, about learning to live on my own, about learning how to learn, and about competing. It is about taking responsibility for one’s grades and having objective feedback on how one is doing.
High school, OTOH, is about socializing and finding creative ways to lose sleep. And I did fine, getting into a Ivy League school. Perhaps the study fails to factor in intelligence, difficulty of the subject matter, study friends, availability of caffeine in the school place, and mostly, the effect of single-gender schools on concentration?
Comment by greggT — August 26, 2012 @ 11:51 am
yeah, it sure does work. freshman year university i blew off an entire semester of real estate class, formulas etc. i crammed all night without sleep (and drank at least a 6 pack too) – went to take the final in the morning and got a 98 or something. Now… it worked for the test, as far as remembering any of it the NEXT day…
Comment by ElrondHubbard — October 26, 2012 @ 6:57 pm