But the best students are also the ones that do it least often. Poor sleeping habits are not advisable. Lack of sleep hurts motivation. Even the most driven students begin to care less about college, their courses, and their lives in general with continuous lack of sleep. And if there is one factor that can be considered most important in engineering, it is motivation.
Motivation is essential in overcoming the challenges and frustrations of an engineering curriculum.
Even through short term gain may be the result of longer days and shorter nights, the long term effects may not be as positive. Late night studying does have indisputable advantages during certain situations. If you are very sure that you know what kinds of questions will be on an exam, or you have sample exams on which the actual exam is predominantly based, it is probably worth your time to do as many of the sample problems as possible and to stay up as long as possible in order to do these problems. Late nigh studying will help in this endeavor. On the other hand, if the exam requires quite a bit of creativity, and you have no idea what will show up on the test, it is probably a better idea no to try and review all the material during the early hours of the morning.