Freshman 15: Fact or Fiction?

I'm sure that most of you have heard at least one horror story about the dreaded "Freshman 15." This week, we're going to be asking several questions about this uniquely collegiate phenomenon. Today we're going to be looking into whether or not there is any statistical backing for the Freshman 15. So, here we go...

The Freshman 15...Mythbusters style (car unrelated)

I've heard all my life that most college students gain weight during there freshman year. The only evidence I heard in support of this, though, was purely anecdotal. My inner nerd engineer naturally requires experimentally-based evidence before I will believe anything...so I started looking around the Internet (most of my info came from here and here...consider that my sourcing). Several studies have been done in recent years to determine whether or not college freshmen gain weight during their first year on campus. A sampling:

• A federally funded study at an unidentified private university in the Northeast found that male freshmen gained 5.6 pounds and female freshmen gained 3.6 pounds, with the large majority of that weight gained in the first semester. Approximately 6% of freshmen gained 15 pounds or more.
• A similar study (funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) conducted at an unidentified public university in the Midwest found that freshman students gained an average of 7.8 pounds during freshman year. Approximately 20% put on 15 pounds or more.
• A study at Cornell University found that freshman students gained an average of 4 pounds during their first 12 weeks of college.
• Researchers at Dartmouth College found that freshman males gained an average of 3.5 pounds during their freshman year while freshman females gained an average of 4 pounds during the same time period.

What does this mean? First of all, it seems that most freshmen do not, in fact, put on 15 pounds during their first year of college. However, the average freshman will put on somewhere between 4 and 8 pounds. I think we can break it down this way...

Freshmen usually gain weight during first year of college:

Freshmen usually put on 15 pounds during the first year of college:

More on the Freshman 15 7 later in the week.