Not sleeping enough might affect your exam scores, says MIT study

• Your sleeping patterns have a huge impact on your academic performance and grades, shows a recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  
• College students getting at least seven hours of proper sleep are found to have better grades.
  
• The study inferred that women tend to perform better in class and scored better grades since they sleep better than men.

Your sleeping patterns will affect your academic performance, says a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A study by two MIT professors found that the university grades are related to the hours of sleep that a college student gets, before tests.

The study published in the journal ‘Science of Learning,’ on was conducted on around 100 engineering students from MIT. They were asked to wear Fitbits to track their activities. According to its conclusions, students getting at least seven hours of proper sleep are found to have better grades.

In fact, students getting just half an hour less of sleep during night scored 50% less than those who slept for over seven hours.

Consistency in sleep habits also plays a crucial role in academic performance. The students who went to bed after a certain time, say 2 am performed lower than their counterparts, despite getting enough hours of sleep.

Women sleep better

The study inferred that women tend to perform better in class and scored better since as sleep better than men. “If we correct for sleep, men and women do the same in class,” Grossman says.

A quarter of the students in the study had an added daily fitness regime to ascertain the impact of physical exercise on their performance. However, students with and without exercise performed equally well.

“What we found at the end of the day was zero correlation with fitness, which I must say was disappointing since I believed, and still believe, there is a tremendous positive impact of exercise on cognitive performance,” Professor Grossman argued.

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