By Chris Cosci

College students have it tough. With escalating tuition prices, higher standards to achieve, and a demanding job search ahead of them, they're under a lot of pressure. So it must be disheartening to learn that, according to separate reports, they have only two options in life: get good grades or die.

The first report comes from UCLA, where Megan Holden, a second-year medical student, talks about the benefits of sleep. Holden refers to a study done at the University of Luebek in Germany, where subjects who received eight hours of sleep were "three to four times more likely to successfully solve number conversion problems than those deprived of sleep before the same tests." The study also shows that the subjects who slept were also better at problem-solving skills and creativity. But it goes without saying that the sleep-deprived subjects were far better at drooling.

Holden also mentions research conducted at Harvard University that produced similar results. Based on the two studies, Holden concluded that sleep should be a high priority for college students. She recommends a "proper eight hours of sleep." I guess that means you sleep in a tuxedo and dream of tea and crumpets.

Holden goes on to say that some experts even recommend nine or ten hours of sleep, and that this extra sleep "can help us consolidate information into long-term memories." Of course, maybe if she wasn't sleeping all the time, she would have seen the second report that appeared in the journal "SLEEP."

"SLEEP" (which presumably uses all capital letters to keep its readers awake) is an eight-issue-a-year publication that focuses on sleep research. In a recent issue, they issued a report that gathers information from three studies, showing how less sleep might actually be better.

One of these studies was performed by Japanese researchers, who followed the sleeping habits of over 100,000 adults for 10 years. After factoring in the subjects' health and lifestyle habits, the research shows that adults who slept longer than seven hours were more likely to die in those 10 years. Similar conclusions were drawn in two other independent studies. The studies also show that even as little as four hours of sleep doesn't seem to affect one's lifespan as much as an extra eighth hour.

But the researchers all agreed that seven hours of sleep seems to be the magic number. After all, the studies also show that those sleeping for four to five hours did poorly on tests for memory and the ability to pay attention. This means that anybody working on less than five hours of sleep probably stopped reading this after the first paragraph.

Still, this is the kind of conflicting research that has become all too prevalent. Every time someone reports on a new study, the findings always seem to suggest the opposite of what was previously reported. "New studies show that eating chocolate can help reduce stress." "The latest research shows that eating chocolate could cause severe nervous disorders in adults." "This just in - chocolate can cure cancer." "Scientists have found that eating chocolate will cause your pancreas to spontaneously combust."

But let's turn our attention back to the college students. Who are they supposed to listen to? Should they heed the experts and get nine to ten hours of sleep so that they can do better on their tests? Or should they cut back to just seven hours to increase their odds of making it to 30?

It's decisions like these that make college life so tough. But if they make the right choice, they'll excel in school and be prepared for the challenges and hardships of the real world - like eating chocolate.