GPAs and Gym Memberships
It’s no secret that regular physical activity has positive impacts on nearly every aspect of human health and performance.
But what about its impact on academic success?
Many studies have shown that college students involved in regular recreational sports activities can increase their academic performance. Yet the majority of these have only reflected this relationship during one moment in time or else relied on data that students had to self-report.
We decided to expand this research in a different way by analyzing data comparing the GPAs to those students who purchased on-campus fitness memberships to those who didn’t.
In all, more than 1100 students out of nearly 6,000 freshmen had memberships and were tracked over two years. After this time, we accessed campus records through a third party and not only determined students’ GPAs, but accumulated credit hours and class standing.
Our findings were clear. Students with memberships had GPAs that were 0.13 points higher than those without. Now, that number may not sound significant at first, but if you’re an undergrad student looking to get into grad school, that number can make a big difference in your educational career. Our findings didn’t stop there. These same students also completed more total credit hours, were more likely to have achieved sophomore status after the first year, and were more likely to still be enrolled in the university after two years.
Although we weren’t able to control for variables such as socio-economic status or how often they used their memberships, the results of this study can still be considered important. Not only does the study show that universities can retain more students by providing good fitness options, but universities can also retain those that have higher GPAs, which in the end, is good for everyone.
How deep does the mind/body connection go?
Dr. James Pivarnik, an epidemiologist at Michigan State University, profiles a specific correlation between hitting the gym & hitting the books.
Dr. James Pivarnik is a professor at Michigan State University, in the Departments of Kinesiology and Epidemiology & Biostatistics, and has been president of the American College of Sports Medicine and the North American Society for Pediatric Exercise Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in exercise physiology from Indiana University and completed an NIH Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the St. Louis University School of Medicine, Department of Physiology.
Pivarnik has studied many aspects of physical activity, particularly during pregnancy, for over 25 years representing many different perspectives including physiologic, psychophysiologic and epidemiologic. He has published 124 peer reviewed papers, 10 book chapters, 190 abstracts and has been a primary or co-investigator on 45 research grants from federal, state and foundation sources. He was also responsible for writing the pregnancy section of the 2008 U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans.