Senior Jocelyn Hall spent much of last weekend in the yearbook office in Curtis Hall, hurrying to finish the project before it's upcoming deadline. During the week, in addition to her work on the yearbook, she dances for Spirit of Color and is a student panelist at Admissions.
Overall, Hall spends about 30 to 35 hours a week on her extracurricular activities, yet she studies for 12.5-15 hours a week and has maintained a GPA of over 3.75. A double major in computer science and art history, Hall is currently working on the project she must complete for the engineering degree.
Though Hall's involvement in extracurriculars may be slightly more than that of the average student, her story is not atypical. A Daily survey conducted Feb. 18-22 suggests that academic performance is actually strengthened by out of class activities and that hours spent studying do not decrease with involvement in extracurriculars.
The survey showed a direct correlation between the percentage of students in the higher GPA ranks and the amount of time they spend per week on extracurriculars. The results suggest that an individual's personality determines the number of hours he or she will spend on extracurriculars and academics, and the success that will be achieved in both.
"I need multiple things going on, otherwise I won't be productive at anything," Hall said.
Other respondents agreed that if they were not spending so much time on extracurriculars, it would not translate to increased studying.
"Before I became heavily involved with extracurriculars at Tufts, I would spend a majority of my time not doing anything useful.... Now that my schedule is very packed, I am forced to be efficient with my time in order to balance my academics and my extracurriculars," wrote one student, a group vice president. "Contrary to what many professors believe, my GPA has actually gone up since my participation in extracurriculars."
But this is not to say that every student who spends more time on extracurriculars will do better in the classroom. Many students do quit organizations because of a need to concentrate on academics, and students have to readjust the balance between hours of participation and academics each semester with academic demands.
Students who do have trouble keeping up their grades are encouraged by the University to cut back their extracurricular commitments. According to the Pachyderm, students who are officers in organizations are supposed to be in good academic standing. Recent improvements in SIS online and better databases of organizations has enabled Student Activities Director Jodie Nealley to check on student officers' grades each semester -- though the process of doing so has never been consistent.
"If an officer is on [academic] Probation 2 or Pro 3, we will ask them to put their academics first," Nealley said.
These conversations, however, take place with only three or four students each semester.
Students did not see that GPAs and hours spent on their extracurriculars are entirely exclusive, however. Of those surveyed, 30 percent of students did say that extracurriculars detract significantly from their academics. But of these students, almost all heralded the value of their extracurriculars in helping them develop skills they would not have gained from the classroom.
"While I think that at times, I wish I had been able to spend some more time on my academics and improving my GPA, I don't think that I would have loved Tufts and become so connected to the school without all of my extracurricular involvement," wrote one student who maintains a GPA in the 3.5 to 3.74 range despite spending 20 to 25 hours on extracurriculars.
Other students praised extracurriculars for teaching them practical skills that would help them obtain jobs or internships, leadership, the ability to work in groups and work with diverse people and personalities, and the ability to budget and manage money.
Some students, however, noted a separation between the worlds of academics and extracurriculars at Tufts. Communication between professors and students, between different staff members, and between student organizations is a University-wide problem that furthers this split, Nealley said.
But others already see the two as intertwined. One survey respondent wrote that it has been extracurriculars, not classes, that have encouraged personal relationships with professors. Another respondent, sophomore Brian Roiter, said his interest in Buddhism manifests itself in his extracurriculars, classes, and leisure time.
Roiter has pursued that interest through discussions with religion Professor Joseph Walser and founded the Buddhist Sangha club with the help of a medical engineering professor. Roiter also got involved in Tufts Coalition to Oppose the War on Iraq at the suggestion of his physics professor, Gary Goldstein.
"Most teachers encourage involvement," Roiter said. In activities where professors are involved, "the professors become more like students. It's more of a friendly basis. I see my professors as friends and not as superiors."
There are ways to increase connections between the spheres of academics and extracurriculars, according to Nealley. Student-faculty-staff committees like the Committee on Student Life teach each category of people to consider the perspective of the others in the committee -- but few of these groups exist at Tufts. Nealley would also like to see freshman seminars similar to the Explorations/Perspectives program that are focused on academic issues but involve student life personnel and also discuss student life issues.
"I always believe that we should be known as co-curricular instead of extra. These activities are parallel to a student's studies," Nealley said.
Of the 80 students surveyed who participate in extracurricular activities more than 25 hours a week, 30 percent had a GPA over 3.75 and 40 percent had a GPA of 3.50-3.74. Those numbers decreased along with hours of participation.
Of students with 15-20 hours spent on extracurriculars, 22 percent had GPAs over 3.75, 44 percent were in the 3.50-3.74 range, and 22 percent had GPAs between 3.00-3.49. The corresponding percentages for ten to 15 hours spent on extracurriculars were 17, 39, and 44 and for five to ten hours participation 8, 42, and 35.
The average GPA at Tufts is around 3.4.
Students who spend 25 or more hours on extracurriculars actually studied more hours than any other grouping in the survey. Of those students, 70 percent studied more than ten hours a week, while that number dropped to 55 percent for the 20 to 25 group, 33 percent for 15 to 20 hours, and 32 percent for 10 to 15 hours. It did go up slightly for the five to 10 hours group, to 42 percent.
More from The Tufts Daily
