I never pulled one because I needed some sleep, but I’ve heard of people staying up all night just so they could study a little while longer.
Umm, I still pull all-nighters for work in my mid-50s! You do what you have to do, although I try to avoid them as much as possible.
Don’t do it. I spent only one night prepping for the LSAT (law school admission test). Stayed up all night and fell asleep three different times during the test.
I spent very late nights (like 4 am) working on robotics projects but its an incredibly bad idea to not sleep before a test.
I used to pull all nighters in grad school, partially doing research and partially prepping for my 9 am class. Then I’d go home to sleep and totally mess up my schedule for the next couple of days…
Staying up all night getting a paper or project done is fine, staying up all night studying for a test you’re taking the next day is just dumb.
I would never do this before a test. Your tiredness is going to hurt you more than you would gain from whatever you can study in one night.
I did do this many years ago as an undergrad after all tests were over, to get a software project finished and handed in before the deadline. One time I handed in the software project, slept 24 hours straight, woke up and watched a baseball game. I could barely keep up with the pace.
By the time that I got to graduate school, I never got myself into a position where I would need to do an all nighter. Working very hard to keep ahead at all times really does pay dividends in the end.
Never. I need my sleep. If I don’t know the material by midnight, I’m not going to know it any better at 5 a.m.
As a freshman, though, I did have a physics study group that would work on problem sets the night before they were due. Some of the group worked most of the night, but I left by 1, or very rarely, by 2.
Research shows that during sleep is when the new knowledge get stored in the memory. So all nighters may hurt your grade in more than one way.
Working hard in the construction industry is not a guarantee you’ll stay ahead, unfortunately. The finish line keeps moving. We are not in control of deadlines.
I’m 63. The last time I stayed up all night preparing a presentation was three nights ago.
For a test I would try to get extra sleep. Amazing what a clear mind after a good night’s sleep can mean for your grades.
The wife and I pulled an all-nighter our freshman year to both finish our take-home General Chemistry II final and prepare for our in-class final. Went in to class, took the exam and turned in the take-home exam, and crashed in the nearby student lounge for a few hours.
Ended up with a 106% on the take-home portion and a 102% on the in-class portion. Wife did comparably well.
I will never do that again if I can help it.
I did once, for psych 1 but I ended up falling asleep on top of the textbook. It didn’t help me at all because I only got a B. Now I pull a two week’er because I’ve found (well at least for myself) that it’s easier to remember things over time than overnight.
Once. And never again. I believe a good night of sleep is the single most beneficial thing you can do to prepare the night before a test
Did it back in the day, when I was in my first semester at UVA. Stayed up most of the night studying for a Calculus 2 final, going to bed around 4 am. I ended up oversleeping and getting to the exam late. I then was so tired, I struggled to answer the exam questions. Bombed it. Never did it again after that, including grad school.
No way. If I don’t know it by 10pm the night before, I’m not going to know it. I do light review the morning of but I don’t learn anything new.
I spent a few true all-nighters to finish papers due the next day, but the closest I came for an exam the next day follows:
During my freshman year, I stayed up late preparing my notes for the Asian-American History final, an open-notes exam (but not open-book…), scheduled for like 8:50am.
I had planned to study until about 4:00am, get a few hours of Z’s, and then write a killer final.
I had a couple 2-liters of Dew and music to help keep me awake, but i fell asleep anyway, probably around 3:00, and was awakened by my roommate asking me “Tom, did you take your final?” at about 10:00am. I had forgotten to set my alarm.
After freaking out and then fretting for a good half-hour, I emailed my story to the prof and apologized profusely, and she allowed me to take it during her office hours later that week, to be scored one letter grade lower than my work merited. I got a B. 
From then on, if I had an exam the next day, I made sure I got some sleep, and I can’t remember the last time I forgot to set an alarm that was necessary.
I’ve done it a bunch of different ways. You can “learn” a semester’s worth of stuff in a night, but the retention will be terrible and your performance in everything will be diminished the day after. On the other hand you can get a lot of work done in a night with no distractions or interruptions, so that’s valuable. A lot also depends on the individual: are you a night owl or a morning person? There are people who get more done between 5 and 8 am than most others, and some have a hot streak from 9 pm to midnight. The whole “brain stops working at ten PM” rule is too rigid, but I would endorse a 1 am amendment.
In general, learn stuff as it’s presented so you don’t get in a hole at test time. There will be times where the work exceeds the hours and you need to go late, but if you’re only working in those hours (vs learning) you’ll minimize the damage. Be sure to get sleep before tests, because sleep deficit is real and needs to be managed to avoid poor performance.
Also, if you do a lot of late hour work you get better at it. We had a small study group for freshman physics that kept appalling hours, but we learned a lot, had fun and got decent to excellent grades. You learn ways to cope with the effects and avoid missteps: you set your alarm when you leave not when you get home, put it across the room instead of bedside, use movement (standing/pacing) rather than caffeine to stay awake. It’s easier when in a group, so make sure to meet with the gang for breakfast the morning of a test to prevent sleeping in. Take naps to blunt the effects of missed sleep. Yadda yadda yadda.
There are a bunch of ways to avoid big catastrophes but in the end you can’t get around the fundamental need to sleep, so as long as you play with this fire you’re going to be more mistake prone, you’ll probably be a cranky a-hole at times, you are more likely to get sick, and eventually you’ll probably choose to strive for a normal work schedule.