Ask any Jumbo if he or she has ever experienced an endless reading assignment, an all−nighter or a late−night study session, and one is bound to hear an exasperated "yes."
A listing in April by the news website The Daily Beast ranked Tufts 21st in a list of the top 50 most stressful universities. Cost and competitiveness each accounted for 35 percent of the overall ranking, while schools' acceptance rates, graduate engineering programs and on−campus crime each accounted for 10 percent.
But before condemning Tufts as a stressful school, some said it is essential to note what exactly stress is and what it implies for students.
Defining stress as strictly negative would be a mistake, according to Marilyn Downs, the director of outreach at Counseling and Mental Health Services (CMHS).
"It's good to consider the complexity of what stress means; it can be helpful to think of stress on a continuum," Downs said.
"Research has shown that there is a curvilinear relationship between stress and performance as can be depicted on a bell curve. At low levels of stress, people may not perform as well as they do with moderate levels, or [at] the ‘top' of the bell curve, which is associated with optimal performance.
"With too much stress, performance tends to decline," she said. "People can start to lose functioning, become overwhelmed and anxious and, in extreme circumstances, become fatigued, tired or experience negative effects on physical or emotional health."
In other words, small amounts of stress may be a good thing.
Athletes who stress out before a big race or game may find that their performance actually improves, and students who experience some stress in the classroom may be able to use that feeling to stay on track academically. Too much stress, however, can result in diminished health and anxiety.
Given that Tufts students will inevitably experience some level of stress throughout their academic careers, Downs said, it is of utmost importance to learn exactly how to handle it.
"Students tend to feel the negative effects of stress when their coping mechanisms are not sufficient for the situation at hand," she said. "If you are able to adapt to a situation and develop new skills, that stress isn't necessarily a problem and can sometimes lead to positive growth."
Another reason to wait before denouncing Tufts as a particularly stressful environment, skeptics said, is The Daily Beast's questionable ranking system.
Patricia Reilly, the director of financial aid at Tufts, said the stress−inducing categories defined by the website do not accurately measure cost, defining it vaguely to use as a factor in school comparisons.
"It seems odd that they would use total costs without taking into account the amount of financial aid offered by a school," Reilly said. If they had considered financial aid offerings, the story would be different, she added.
"I would expect that we would have fallen significantly within the rankings," she said.
Downs agreed. According to the last Healthy Minds Study conducted at Tufts in spring 2010, she said, only 11 percent of students said they were experiencing financial struggles. Therefore, school costs may not be an accurate measure of stress for all students, who have varying financial resources and situations.
Although competitiveness and academic rigor are both reasonable factors to consider in a study relating to stress, Downs said, 31 percent of students in the Healthy Minds Study rated Tufts as very competitive or competitive, while 27 percent rated it as not competitive or very uncompetitive.
Senior Tala Kayyali thinks that the categories used in the study are relevant but that the rankings may not have been completely accurate.
"Factors like tuition are much easier to rank than more subjective things like competitiveness," she said. "There are other important factors that make Tufts a great school, and focusing on factors like tuition and crime rates leave other aspects in the shadow."
Still, the academics at Tufts are definitely a source of student stress, according to Carmen Lowe, the director of the Academic Resource Center (ARC).
"One of the biggest reasons [for stress] is feeling over committed," Lowe said. "Students have to keep up with their academics and, at the same time, their extracurricular activities and leadership roles. While this can be a stress reliever in a way, these activities can be very time−consuming, so that [they] eat into study time and make you feel stressed."
Stress originates from a wide array of sources, Lowe said, from the question of life after graduation to digital distractions.
"Students are never free of constantly checking emails, texting and logging into websites," she said. "This never allows people to relax and it is something this generation doesn't really realize."
When trying to understand why stress levels are so high among students at a school like Tufts, some Jumbos agree that it is not solely due to academics.
Like Lowe, sophomore Lizzeth Merchan thinks that a heavy involvement in extracurricular activities could factor into stress levels.
"A student will sometimes be involved in different advocacy groups, social groups and volunteer organizations, in addition to working and handling the workload of four or five classes," she said.
Recognizing that college, for a myriad of reasons, is a stressful time for students, the university has put in place a number of tools to aid in stress management.
The ARC offers tutoring for various subjects and a time−management and study strategies program that is focused on helping students deal with overwhelming stress. Junior Alisha Sett witnessed some of her friends learn to address mental strain thanks to these programs.
"I have friends who've loved the free time−management counseling," Sett said. "I went to one of those sessions, too. I definitely know people who have benefited greatly from it and stuck to weekly meetings with their counselors for up to two years."
CMHS' programming teaches students how to cope with not only academic stress but social stress as well. Christopher Willard, a staff psychologist at CMHS, is in charge of developing and offering a variety of mindfulness and stress−reduction activities for students.
"Tufts students are high−achieving leaders in their high schools and go on to become high−achieving graduates after Tufts. This is a recipe for great success but also great stress," Willard said.
"I think that one place the school and we at CMHS can help," he said, "is by teaching and offering skills to cope with stress that students can then use later in life."
