By Yoshihiko Kubota, Xiyue Li, and Kye Lippold
Hamilton students have similar study habits regardless of class year, gender, majors, and across both sides of campus, according to 472 students who responded to an anonymous online survey conducted by Hampoll last week. The breakdown of the respondents by class was 27% seniors, 22% juniors, 25% sophomores, and 25% freshmen, while 41% were male and 59% were female.
Around 33% of respondents identified themselves as having lived mostly on the darkside since freshmen year, while another 46% said they have lived mostly on the lightside. The vast majority of students, 80.1%, study between one hour and five hours a day (35.8% between one and three hours and 45.5% between three and five hours) with a slight skew towards longer study hours. Most students (70%) study from 6 pm to midnight; Freshmen are the most likely (22%) to study during the afternoon (12-6pm), while Juniors stay up the latest, with 78% staying up to midnight and 9% studying after midnight.
While study hours did not differ significantly between darksiders and lightsiders, study locations showed a distinct difference by campus side (see chart below). While 52.7% of lighsiders preferred to study either in the Science Center or the library, only 14.8% of darksiders chose those places to study. On the contrary, 32.3% of the darksiders opted to study in KJ while 50.3% preferred to work in their dorms. Thus, students prefer study locations close to where they live. Other spots to study mentioned by students included the common room of dorms, Café Opus and the third floor of the Chapel.
Friday nights, often considered a synonym for partying, are apparently not as wild for high-performing students. About 69% of students never study on Fridays, but students who receive A's in their classes were 10% more likely than B students to give up their Friday nights. Studying on Friday nights was an area that darksiders and lightsiders disagreed on, as 34.8% and 27.8% respectively study on those nights. Despite partying, most Hamilton students devoted more time to their academic pursuits; the majority student responses for time spent on different activities indicate 1-3 hours spent on extracurricular activities daily, 1-3 hours on leisure, 6-8 hours asleep, and 3-5 hours studying.Other notable facts about study habits at Hamilton are that 63% listen to music while studying, that a little over 10% of students prefer to study in groups, and that 68% of the student population have not missed any classes this semester without appropriate reasons. Similarly, about two thirds of students did not report doing work for one class while attending class for a different subject. Most Hamilton students start working on major assignments in the week before the deadline (see chart below), and A students were 21% likely to start assignments more than a week before deadline, compared to 13% of B students.
When asked about their use of academic resources, students gave mixed results. The student body is evenly split between those who attend lectures and those who do not, as 47% identified themselves as attending lectures sometimes (8.3% often), while 47% attended rarely or never. Seniors were more likely to attend such events than underclassmen. Students also used the Q-Lit Center, the Writing Center, the Oral Communications Center, and the Language Lab sparsely, as not a single one of these resources was used often by more than 8% of the student body. Regarding other academic resources, the internet was the number one resource for studying; 83.3% used it often, followed by 69.5% using the library (including digital resources), and 61.2% frequently attended professors' office hours.
