Social network analysis: friendship inferred by chosen courses, commuting time and student performance at university

Our social network analysis (SNA) evaluates the performance of students taking courses with a group of friends versus students used to take courses alone. We evaluate the probability to befriend by comparing the number of courses shared by students with the probability to be assigned in the same classroom randomly based on curriculum constraints. A minimum of courses taken in common is used as a criterion to identify students belonging to a tribe of friends. The main findings are that students in tribes over perform other students by about half point of GPA, and are dropping and repeating fewer courses. Considering student without friends, we measured the impact of the commuting distance on GPA and drop off rate: students with very low GPA and high drop off are mostly students with significantly higher commuting time.