How friends affect a GPA

Researchers find a student’s grades can be pulled up or down by a social network.

By Karen Kaplan

Researchers have some advice for high school students who want to improve their grades: Become friends with academically oriented classmates.

A team surveyed the junior class at Maine-Endwell High School in Endwell, N.Y., and asked students to rate each of their classmates as a “best friend,” a “friend,” an “acquaintance” or someone they didn’t know. They got responses from 92% of students and used them to reconstruct the social networks among 158 11thgraders as of Jan. 11, 2011.

The research team also obtained the grade point averages for all 158 students in January 2011 and January 2012, so they could track how their academic performance changed over time. For the analysis, those GPAs were converted into class rankings. Then they compared the rankings of each student to those of their best friends, friends and acquaintances.

Researchers found a linear relationship between students’ grades and the academic environment of their social networks. If a student’s class ranking at the start of the study was higher than usual for his or her social network, it tended to fall over the course of the year. Conversely, if a student ranked below the rest of her group, his or her class ranking tended to rise.

The most significant influence appeared to be the grades of those labeled as friends. To explain this, the researchers hypothesized that the grades of best friends made little difference because they were probably very similar to start with. But the gaps between students and their other friends were bigger, so there was more opportunity for influence.

The findings were published in the journal PLoS One. The results are in line with other studies showing that happiness, obesity and other traits can spread through social networks.