Good scholars born early: Norway

TheSun 14Dec2005 Good scholars born early: Norway OSLO: Children born during the first three months of the year are more likely to make good grades than children born towards the end of the year, newspapers said yesterday quoting a new Norwegian study. Students with birthdays in January, February and March tend to have far better grades than those born in the last three months of the year, a University of Oslo survey of 6,752 14 and 15-year-olds showed. "I was surprised by how great the diffe rences actually were," Lars Lien, a researcher at the University's Institute of General Practice and Community Medicine and one of the authors of the report, told Norwegian daily Dagbladet. The report, which also showed that boys born late in the year were more likely to have problems making friends, did not delve into the reasons for the differences. "I think that more research in this area is needed," Lien said. ­ AFP