It seems to go hand-in-hand, college kids and coffee. Walk into any coffee shop, not just a Starbucks, but any of them, mom & pop shops, your neighborhood favorite – basically anywhere that sells coffee, and you’ll see students on MacBooks with earbuds working on classwork with a cup or two of coffee next to them.
But coffee has recently been linked to lowering students’ grade point averages. We’re talking a lot of coffee here, but there’s a direct correlation.
Specifically, students who drank more coffee had a lower GPA than students who only had a cup or two per day. Let’s get down to numbers:
Students who drank no coffee, on average scored a 3.43 GPA.
Students who drank 2 cups per day averaged a GPA of 3.39. Not too far behind, right?
Students who drank 5 cups of coffee per day not only shook uncontrollably (we’re guessing), they scored an average 3.28 GPA.
It doesn’t sound like much of a decrease, but it’s a consistent decline in the Coffee-to-GPA ratio. Theories include the fact that coffee, especially that much, can keep you up at night which lowers your quality of sleep, which in turn will hinder your memory performance.
Speaking of sleep, when should we stop consuming coffee or other caffeine before going to bed? About 6-8 hours before bedtime is a good window to lay off the caffeine. Decaf is ok though. But is it really? Is it?
