School friends may play a major role in your teen’s academic success, a new study suggests.
It included 629 12th-graders in Los Angeles who filled out a questionnaire and then kept a record of activities such as time spent studying and time spent with school friends and out-of-school friends.
Students with higher grade-point averages (GPAs) had more school friends than out-of-school friends. The more school friends, the higher the GPA.
“We found that within an adolescent’s friendship group, those with a higher proportion of friends who attended the same school received higher grades,” Melissa R. Witkow, an assistant professor of psychology at Willamette University, said in a University of California, Los Angeles, news release. “This is partially because in-school friends are more likely to be achievement-oriented and share and support school-related activities, including studying, because they are all in the same environment.”
