Good Sleep Habits In College

Updated October 2024

Few college freshmen think about how the effects of sleep (or lack thereof) impact their college experience. Too little sleep equals exhaustion. Too much sleep means you'll miss class.

Learning how to balance sleep with your other college activities will help you enjoy these four years and keep on top of your studies.

Avoid studying in bed

Avoid the temptation to work in bed. It's a bad habit that can mess with your sleep cycle and study habits.  When you do schoolwork on your bed, you confuse your brain. It's programmed to recognize this spot as your sleeping space, overriding your desire to study with a need to sleep. Other reasons to study elsewhere?

• It's bad for your posture and can make your back or neck stiff. Eventually, you could have issues with your spine.
• Stretching out on your stomach to study might feel good, but it can sabotage your productivity. It's hard to spread out and keep track of notes, papers, and books, too.

Can't resist studying in bed? Try this.

Ok, we get it. Some habits are just impossible to break. Buy a reading pillow that will give your back the support it needs (and even help you avoid slouching).

Get a portable study table or lap desk. They'll help with posture and give you a place to rest your laptop or textbook.

Schedule regular breaks every 25 - 30 minutes. Get up, walk around, and stretch a little  to work the kinks out. If you're super-focused and don't want to pause after such a short time, extend your timer for 45 minutes.

Here's our caveat: If you study in bed, your brain may not recognize the signal that it really is time to shut down at the end of the day. This confusion could lead to challenges falling asleep when you need to—and could affect your sleep quality, too.

Work Out Bedtime Norms With Roommates

Nothing's worse than having a different sleep schedule different from your roommate. They burst in with friends, the lights flash on, your whole wind-down routine flies out the door, and you're wide awake.

Have a conversation about dedicated silent times. Nothing's more irritating than a late night of studying for you—and a long night of listening to keyboard clicks for your roomie (and vice versa).

Establish normal bedtime rules with your roommate early in the semester to avoid frustration and a slow buildup of stress and resentment resulting from lost sleep.

Not sure how to approach this conversation? Here are a few topics suggested by sleep.com:

• Bedtime routines. Chat about how each of you winds down at the end of the day because you probably have different preferences and habits.
• Morning routines. If you need coffee to function and your roommate's an early bird, see what compromise you can reach, especially if they have an 8 a.m. class and your first class isn't until noon.
• Noise levels. Can you sleep through a rock concert or does a leaf falling on the ground three blocks away wake you up? See where you and your roommate fall with noise sensitivity and compromise from there.
• Sleep quirks. Does one of you snore or talk in your sleep?  It might help to divulge your quirks (even though it may feel embarrassing at first) so no one is unpleasantly surprised.

Create a game plan

You and your roommate should agree on "quiet and dark" hours. If you're an early-to-bed kind of person, maybe you can wear noise cancelling earplugs and your roommie can wear headphones to listen to music. During midterms or finals week, you might agree to hit the library or lounge for late-night study sessions.

Blue light emitted by phones and other electronics can disrupt sleep. Set firm timelines for lights out (all screens off) so you don't disrupt your brain's production of melatonin, which is a sleep hormone.

Figure out how to deal with quirks like snoring. Earplugs are a wonderful option.

Don’t Prioritize Studying over Sleeping 

Missing sleep so that you can study late into the night is all right once in a while. Regularly short-changing your sleep, however, will negatively affect your grades.

One study conducted by PNAS found that "lower average nightly sleep early in an academic term predicted a lower end-term GPA" — a 0.07-point drop. As the semester progresses and you lose more sleep, you accumulate sleep debt, which has a serious effect on how well you do in your classes.

For more tips on setting a good college sleep schedule that works for you, check out this article.