It is not uncommon for many students to stay up late at night when exams are approaching.
But according to a new study, staying up all night revising may not be the best way to ace your forthcoming exams.
Researchers said those with true academic ‘grit’ are actually less likely to deprive themselves of sleep and food than their less resilient peers.
Rather than giving the body a hard time, a better measure of determination is to see how well students manage their time and adapt their learning techniques.
The study, by the Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty, examined the characteristics and performance of 4,000 teenagers.
It found that exhibiting ‘grit’, which is more predictive of academic success than IQ, does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with pushing oneself at all costs.
This dispels the widely held notion that developing grit requires unhealthy behaviours such as sacrificing sleep or adopting poor eating habits.
In the research, ‘grit’ described a set of desirable qualities such as determination, courage and persistence.
The findings show that children who exhibit grit are also likely to look after themselves, and cultivate healthy emotional regulation skills, rather than behaving in ways that are bad for their health.
The study also examined pupils who had a ‘growth mindset’ – one in which they believed they had the potential to improve rather than having fixed abilities.
These students were more likely to help others, possibly because they believed others could also improve.
Dr Christina Hinton, neuroscientist and faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said: ‘Our results suggest that grit does not require pushing yourself at all costs, but rather cultivating healthy emotional regulation skills and effective learning strategies.
‘In addition, the finding that students with a growth mindset are more likely to help their classmates is very exciting.’
