IStock Photo 9766297 © Dragana Jokmanovic

Universities typically stress the advancement of knowledge and intellectual integrity—but many college students routinely put themselves in the hands of Fate. The odds an undergraduate will wear lucky clothing as part of a behavioral ritual or superstition are 1 in 3.26. The odds he or she will strive to avoid “jinxes” are almost double that, 1 in 1.66 (60%).

A Canadian study from 1989 found that superstition was frequently tied to anxiety—when one flared up, so did the other. Exam season brought out a host of strange behaviors. Students reported burning incense, wearing tattered clothing, avoiding cracks in the gym floor, cutting hair short to let the knowledge “flow freely,” growing hair long to “keep the knowledge in,” sitting next to ugly people, and “scrounging at bus stops” for lucky coins. One student rolled his notes into a tube and twisted them, symbolically wringing information out like water from a wash cloth. Another student carefully clipped and buffed the three fingernails that would come into contact with her pen. Others focused on eating for success. One student stuck to a pre-exam diet of frozen waffles and TV dinners; another stirred his coffee exactly 20 times on test days; another arranged a link of breakfast sausage and two fried eggs to form 100, the grade she hoped to receive.

Student superstitions have always been motivated by the same thing: fear of the unknown. A 1910 study from the American Journal of Insanity is full of seemingly quaint superstitions. One student says that toothpicks made from a tree struck by lightning will ward off dental problems. Another says that “If you will carry a potato in your pocket, it will cure rheumatism.” Though these ailment-focused beliefs are different from today’s pre-exam rituals, they illustrate the longevity of superstitious practices. “There is infinite rest in believing in something,” writes the author of the study, “even if that something will at some future day prove insufficient.”

With the average annual cost of a private college hovering just above $30,000 in 2008, a little incense and frozen waffles couldn’t hurt.