@Indiansuperman: Read Where you go is not who you’ll be, read Colleges that Change lives, and instead of obsessing about Ivies, think about what you want in life beside prestige.
You can’t do anything about your peers.
America’s main problem is that most kids do NOT push themselves, are content graduating with Algebra 2 as their highest math and 2 years of a foreign language, see high school as being mostly a place for socializing and practicing sports, and think of college as a 4-year party that’s due to them and that’ll somehow end with a job, realizing a bit late that they’re not ready for it and may not be able to do what they want.
(TIMMS and PISA results are quite eloquent on the achievement issue, as is Paying for the party wrt to many students’ view of college).
Considering how many top colleges have more children of the 1% than children of the 60%, I’d say the main problem isn’t how some pockets go insane with college admissions.
The problem you mention is real, but it doesn’t affect society as a whole.