Friends don’t just stick by each other through thick and thin, they also play an important role in studying. Students who have friends among their peers and prepare exams together, normally perform a lot better than students who study by themselves or have less of a social network.

ETH sociologists have demonstrated through a new dynamic network analysis method how relationships among Bachelor’s students develop and turn into a network during the first academic year. In so doing, they noticed that those students who passed their exams at the end of their first year on a Bachelor’s degree programme had a much stronger network with their peers than those who failed their exams. “The extent to which a student's network and degree of integration influenced their individual results did surprise me”, says Christoph Stadtfeld, sociologist and ETH Professor of Social Networks, “some students don't fail because of their individual abilities but because they fall through the network.”

Informal relationships are important

The ETH researchers examined a total of 9,266 informal relationships involving a total of 226 Bachelor's students in their first year at ETH Zurich for their study, the results of which are published in the magazine “PNAS”. What sets their method apart is that it enables them to determine the influence of social networks on individual academic success, while other studies of educational achievement tend to connect performance and academic success primarily with individual variables, such as gender, intelligence, motivation or resilience. The ETH sociologists argue, for example, that academic success is not purely a result of the amount of time spent studying.

It is also interesting that studying relationships are not mainly centred around those students who best understand the subject matter. “The students don't form strategic networks, instead their network grows out of their informal relationships”, explains Christoph Stadtfeld. His analysis of networks reveals how relationships develop and change over time.

Stadtfeld’s group of researchers show that students initially develop informal relationships when starting their studies. These encounters can lead to friendships if students spend more time together and support each other, ultimately leading to studying groups.

The results of Stadtfeld’s team show that students build friendships prior to studying and preparing for exams together. “Friendships that result from preparing exams together are not the norm”, explains András Vörös, one of the authors of the study.