Shark Tank Season 5 investor Namita Thapar shared unique advice for students and parents for the upcoming exam season. As several students enter the race to the final exams, and along with them their parents, the pharmaceutical entrepreneur shared her take on studying all night before exams, and how beneficial it really is. In a short video on X (formerly Twitter), the 48-year-old investor and a mother of two, opened up about the stressful exam season ahead.
‘So Jao [Go to Sleep]’ was her overarching advice for children who were yet to sit for their exams in the upcoming months. In her post, she shared, ” Not just kids but also parents these days glorify ‘all-nighters’ & this needs to be challenged with science.” She shared a research finding that more sleep was directly linked to better information retention and overall performance.
‘All-nighter’ vs ‘8-hour sleep’ rule: What’s better?
As per the Shark Tank Season 5 judge, sleeping for 8 hours and giving adequate rest to your brain will allow maximum information retention. Sharing a control group study, Thapar shared, “Two groups were studied. One group pulled an all-nighter, and the second group slept for 8 hours. After that, both groups were given new information and MRI scans of both groups’ brains were taken. Guess what? The group that pulled an all-nighter had 40% less brain functioning than the group that slept for 8 hours.”
Next few months are full of exams & deadlines. Not just kids but also parents these days glorify ‘all nighters’ & this needs to be challenged with science. There is evidence that shows that students who sleep well at night, do much better during their exams. All nighter equals… pic.twitter.com/hyjNbEk7Rm
— Namita (@namitathapar) January 7, 2026
Further, she shared, “Before your exams, your brain is like a sponge. Sleep well, and it’ll absorb all this data. And during the exams, also sleep well because it will lock all the memories for recall later when you need to take the exam.”
What does science say?
According to a study published in the National Library of Medicine, the study titled ‘The Eight-Hour Sleep Challenge During Final Exams Week’ by Scullin in 2018 concluded that a student who slept for more than 8 hours scored higher than a student who didn’t. In fact, a 2020 study from Scientific Reports also found that sleeping for 4 hours or less hampered the ability to acquire new memories the next day, often required during long hours of exam preparation.
However, those who wish to apply the cramming technique tend to fail in encoding information as visual categorisation is reduced by nearly 50 per cent in the brain. The hippocampus, a part of the human brain linked to memory management, its activation also slowed down due to an overall lack of sleep.
