We see this for sure. Her best friend has massive anxiety and is obsessed with school and her grades. My daughter is a very responsible and hard worker, she always makes sure her homework is done, studies for tests, does her papers timely. But her friend is far worse. Every day she openly vents about homework, and recently she hounded the gym teacher to give her an A+ instead of an A for first quarter grade. At our HS, it is standard for gym teachers to give out A (95) grades, for kids who participate and do well. But for my daughter’s friend, She was trying to get an A+ in every single class, so had to have multiple conversations with the gym teacher to lobby for the A+. My daughter thought that wasn’t worth it (remembering my daughter plays HS soccer, is athletic and likes gym), and she was fine with the A grade in gym. Her GPA was around 4.0 UW, so at the end of the day, is that much stress worth it? Plus, most colleges “throw out” your health/gym/music/baking type grades anyway and enter your classes into their own GPA calculators. For those that do not (mainly large state schools), they aren’t going to care if someone has a 4.03 or a 4.01.
Your post had many excellent points. I know my D24 would not want to play Div 1 soccer. Sure, she would love the acknowledgement, but it is a rigorous, demanding full time job at that level and trumps all other aspects of college. I played D2 baseball and I ended up quitting and giving up my partial scholarship as a sophomore after realizing that college sports were all work, and no fun. She could consider Division III, but as mentioned earlier, many of the schools I think she would choose would be D1, so likely she would be club (or no more soccer at all as she focuses on school, and social life). She currently is drawn to Boston (she loves going there to visit), and schools like Northeastern, BU. Unlike my older 2, who did not want to be in a city, she seems to like it. Those schools would not be cheap of course even if she wins a lot of merit, so we will likely play the game as we did with the older 2 (apply to 8-10 schools and play a game of show me the money).
However, schools like Stanford, MIT, ivies and California schools, could make her willing to borrow more if it were for the right fit and program. That is of course, if she ends up wanting to apply to them, and of course, they are interested in her. But I agree with you, if she doesn’t want to be with those type of kids, it doesn’t make sense to apply. My D who is at WPI was also very interested in Carnegie Mellon, and had a pretty good chance to get in, but she refused to apply for that very reason. She didn’t want to be with a ton of kids who all where super type-A overachievers. She wanted kids more like herself (very good student, but not perfect)