Thought it was an interesting article. I have to say, this sounds a lot more like my HS career and my sleep habits than I’d like. It’s a wake-up call (no pun intended).
I am honestly not surprised that Columbia students go to bed the latest. When I worked in res life there I stopped even being surprised by the things that would happen in the wee hours of the morning. (However, one caveat is that until recently Columbia didn’t have many undergraduate classes that started before 9 am and they don’t have many classes on Fridays.)
But there’s nothing in the report that suggests that going to sleep later is correlated with higher grades, simply that elite school students on average go to sleep later. The study also says that these students have the same average sleep time as the students who go to less prestigious universities. It’s not that the elite school students are getting less sleep; they’re just going to bed later and waking up later.
Elite schools usually have fewer commuter students. At my private top-50 university, the library and many other buildings are open all night to students. At a nearby state school that serves mostly commuters, the library closes well before midnight. The only place you can go is your dorm if you have one, and most people don’t.