At the start of a new school year, students are looking for ways to excel in classes and raise their GPA.

Some students at Iowa State believe that hard work and dedication is the only way to be at the top of the class. But a myth that has surrounded residence halls on ISU and other campuses for years deals with another way to make the grade.

The “rumor” says that if a roommate in a residence hall dies or commits suicide, the remaining roommate automatically gets straight As.

The myth is parodied in the recently released movie “Dead Man on Campus.”

Although many ISU students say they have heard the roommate death myth, only some of them realize it is fiction.

“I haven’t heard [the myth] on campus yet, but I have heard about the movie, and I wouldn’t want it to happen to me,” said Rachel Betts, freshman in family and consumer sciences currently living in Willow Hall.

“A myth is just a myth. It doesn’t mean it could actually happen,” said Mardi Powell, freshman in elementary education also living in Willow.

Kim Ranfeld, junior in agricultural business living in Towers, said she had not heard the myth yet, but she could believe the school would be a little lenient toward someone whose roommate died during the semester.

“It’d be depressing for your roommate to die,” Ranfeld said, “but I work hard for my grades, and it wouldn’t be fair.”

Many students share Ranfeld’s view.

“It’s not right, because you’d be getting rewarded for something bad that happened to someone else,” Powell said.

The movie about getting As after the death of a roommate, as well as the rumor that the practice is true, has hit college campuses by storm, and realistic or not, some students do believe it.

However, at least one ISU official denied that there is any truth to the story.

“That’s quite a myth,” Associate Provost Edwin Lewis said. “I had not heard that anywhere around here.

“I would not want to suggest that any student operate under that assumption,” Lewis said.