Which Colleges Have the Fattest Tuesday?

Course Hero finds New Orleans-based students 19 times less likely to be studying during Mardi Gras compared to all others

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Course Hero

Mar 04, 2019, 13:06 ET

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., March 4, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Mardi Gras is upon us and while students around the country might be indulging in a little extra partying, new research from Course Hero, an online learning platform curating over 25 million course-specific study resources, finds that students in New Orleans are 19 times more likely to drop their homework in favor of hurricanes.

Which Louisiana colleges ditch the books for Fat Tuesday? Course Hero crunched the numbers.

"Course Hero's vision is for every student to graduate confident and prepared," said Course Hero cofounder and CEO Andrew Grauer. "A big part of being able to support students is understanding their lifestyles and study habits. Our Fat Tuesday findings provide unique insight into the very profound impact that social events have on studying."

How big is the delta down by The Delta
To understand the impact of Fat Tuesday, researchers compared students' study sessions on Course Hero on two consecutive Tuesdays in February 2018, the latter of which was Fat Tuesday. Nationally, traffic dipped a modest 3 percent but it crashed a whopping 51 percent in Louisiana.

Southern University at New Orleans puts up the biggest drop
Southern University at New Orleans took the biggest hit, dropping 70 percent. They were followed by University of Louisiana at Lafayette (69 percent) and Louisiana State University (66 percent). The Louisiana State University at Shreveport bucked the trend, dropping only 12%.

It's a state-wide phenomenon
Course Hero took a deeper dive to understand if the dip was directly proportional to a school's proximity to Bourbon Street. The data showed that the Fat Tuesday drop is a state-wide issue. Schools in New Orleans on average dropped 53 percent, while the overall Louisiana average (excluding those same New Orleans schools) dropped 51 percent.

Public universities swept the top 10
Nearly every Louisiana school examined for this report showed a drop in study traffic. Moreover, nearly all showed significant, double-digit drops. However, when the schools were ranked by drop off size, all of the top ten spots were occupied by public universities.

UCLA spikes double digit drops
The national average was a three percent drop across a random sample of colleges and universities using Course Hero in 2018. Among the colleges reviewed outside of Louisiana, University of California, Los Angeles, was among the schools that saw the largest impact, with a 13 percent drop in traffic on Fat Tuesday in 2018.

Tulane takes top honors for bouncing back
Tulane University showed the fastest bounce-back rate. Though it experienced a 44 percent drop on Fat Tuesday, students rebounded 120% from its Mardi Gras average within 24 hours. Other schools took far longer to regain normal study levels.

Methodology
Research compares students' study sessions on Course Hero for users in Louisiana on two consecutive Tuesdays in February 2018. All traffic data was summarized by college/university; only those schools with a minimum sample size were selected (>50 study sessions per school on 2/6/18). National average based on a random sample of student study sessions at colleges and universities across the country.

About Course Hero
Course Hero is an online learning platform where members can access over 25 million course-specific study resources contributed by a community of students and educators. The platform includes practice problems, study guides, videos, class notes, and step-by-step explanations to help with every college class—from mathematics to literature, biology to history, accounting to psychology, and everything in between. Course Hero has been recognized as one of the 2017 Technology Fast 500 by Deloitte and named a 2018 Best Place to Work in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times and Silicon Valley Business Journal.

Connect with Course Hero at www.coursehero.com or on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest.

For more information, contact:
Grayling PR for Course Hero
[email protected]

SOURCE Course Hero