How College Friends Can Affect Studies

Friendships at college should not be underestimated, as they can play a significant role in how you perform academically and socially, a new study has found. The new study was conducted by Dartmouth College in the US. Janice McCabe, associate professor at Dartmouth, found that student friendships can be classified into three types: tight-knitters, samplers and compartmentalisers. Tight-knitters have one dense group of friends, where nearly everyone knows each other. Academically their friends can be supportive. However, they also have the potential to pull each other down, if they lack academic skills and motivation. Compartmentalisers have two or four clusters of friends: one or more for studying and one or more for having fun. They rely less on their friends to succeed in college. Samplers have one on one friendships rather than groups. They are independent and do not rely on their friends for a sense of belonging; they are often socially isolated.

Unerrating Girls' Maths Contributes To Gender Gap

Teachers tend to give lower rating to girls’ maths skills even when their achievement and behavior is similar to that of boys, likely contributing to the growth in the gender gap in maths, a US study has found. Beginning in early elementary school boys outperform girls in math – especially among the highest achievers – continuing a troubling pattern found in the late 1990s, researchers said. Despite changes in the educational landscape, this finding suggest that the gender gaps observed among children who entered kindergarten in 2010 are strikingly similar to what we saw in children who entered kindergarten in 1998. The study tracked developmental and educational outcomes of children in the US over time. Data from the study’s kindergarten class of 1998-1999 showed that boys and girls began kindergarten with similar math proficiency, but disparities developed by grade 3 with girls falling behind.