As part of their PW project, a group of students investigated the mysterious structure known as the “Wishing Well” and its alleged supernatural abilities.

Following a considerable number of field trips and “consultations” with several architectural texts, the researchers found no evidence of any liquid source besides the perspiration of nervous students. Attempted quantitative measurements at the distance to the bottom of the well were also largely futile, with the researchers finding it to be approximately equal to the depth of students’ despair.

Coin tosses of varying denominations into the shaft of the well were unsuccessful in summoning any aquatic spirits or other abnormal phenomena. Whilst some exclamations of pain and warnings about being a nuisance originating from the bottom of the pit were briefly recorded, they were chalked down to “experimental anomalies”.

Several sincere prayers made about the results of the Common Test also appear to have gone unheeded. While the researchers are still awaiting results from a separate divine request which is only expected to be released next April, they do not appear to be optimistic after their PW tutor ripped up their report and danced on its tattered remains.

A meta analysis of 8 years worth of marginally different PW reports by our statisticians has found that the statistical evidence to support the practice of wishing at the wishing well is entirely insignificant (p=-2). Instead, there appears to be a negative correlation between time spent throwing coins into the wishing well and grades (r=-5). Students may find better luck throwing money at their army of tuition teachers instead.

Following the study, many students have become disillusioned with the wishing well’s actual ability to grant wishes. Some, still desperate to avoid hard work, have resorted to worshipping Dean’s List students and the Bell Curve God as a substitute to visiting the wishing well.

Don’t expect the area to clear up any time soon though, Waffle Press analysts have come to the conclusion that more students will now be seeing teachers at the wishing well for consults following this bulletin.