Hello, everyone! I’m writing a series of of essays on the psychosocial and physical effects of the college application process on high school students. The process creates huge amounts of stress and pressure, and this needs to be recognized so steps can be taken to maybe help alleviate this. I would really appreciate it if you would comment on your experience with (or your peers’ experiences with) the following:
*Competition in high schools
*Cheating and drugs to enhance school performance
*Physiological effects of stress created by school
*Pressure to go to a “good college”
Please recognize that if you comment, I may use your quote in my essays, which will be published online at The Echo Report. I would really appreciate it if you would include your first name and grade in your comments as well.
Thank you so much! 
I would also appreciate parent perspectives!
Alexandra, Grade 11. I felt huge pressure to excel and do well by my parents, who cringe at the thought that I’m not a straight A student. I make good grades, but they’re not perfect. I became obsessed with making my parents proud of me, and I felt like the only way I could do that was through vein a perfect student. I nearly killed myself before they realized the pressure I was placing on myself. That was my sophomore year. Ever since then, they’ve been really understanding, and my relationships with my parents have strengthened greatly. I learned that my non-academic achievements also made them immensely proud of me.
(not using this as an excuse not to do hw but i really needed a break) I live in a really competitive town and there is so much pressure to do well in school and to get into a good college. If you don’t get into a good college, people basically see you as a failure. It’s perfectly normal here to skip school because you’re crying over a college rejection (and then there are those kids that get accepted into all the ivies and rub it in people’s faces). People joke about it like “if she doesn’t get into Yale, she’ll probably kill herself” but honestly, sometimes, there’s a lot of truth behind that statement. A college will only accept so many people from one school so it’s like the Hunger Games in my school–we’re all trying to be one of the few accepted to HYPSM. The pressure can break apart friendships because people get jealous when someone else is doing better in a class than them. Sometimes, friendships break apart because one person has a legacy to an ivy and the other person is jealous that he/she doesn’t have that leg up (first hand experience). Honestly, I’ve started hanging out with underclassmen just so I don’t have to compete with them (but they’re really cool and awesome!). We’re all trying so hard to succeed. We’re even comparing the amount of sleep we get, which is apparently a measure of how hard we’re trying in school,–“Oh, I got two and a half hours!” “Ha! Well, I got two hours! Beat that!”–which is really ironic because we complain so much about the lack of sleep too. This town is the town of grade grubbing (…guilty) and expensive lavish gifts during the holidays in hopes of being the teacher’s favorite. It has come to the point that the teachers are constantly being reminded of the new rules in the school district: “No extra credit” and “No rounding”. Parents are in on this too. They pick up their kids from school early when their child has gym last period or allow their kid to go to school late (“doctor’s appointment”) so the kid has more time to study. They hire expensive tutors (sometimes for hours so none of the other students can have that tutor) so their kid can get an A on a test. I know some students that are always “sick” on the day of a test just so he or she can ask for the questions afterwards (that backfires because most students are really competitive and won’t tell you anything). So in conclusion, my town is terrible and college is so stressful, and no child should have to go through this.
I’m not even sure if what I said made sense but I needed to rant about my town. Also it’s late and I still have so much hw to do (maybe i can get three hours of sleep…?) so I’m brain dead so ignore all grammatical & spelling errors.
-Tina, 11th grade
@musiclover131 and @tinawu98 thank you so much for sharing your experiences with the process! Tina, I know it’s probably odd to imagine, but I almost have the opposite problem of you! I live in a tiny town in Wisconsin, and there is little ambition to go to a prestigious college (or any college at all, for many). It’s interesting to see the two extremes of the problem!
Maybe it’s just my personal experience, but my school is not competitive at all. Yes, there are a ton of really smart people, but it’s not cutthroat like other people describe. We’re all friends and we all care about each others successes. Cheating happens a lot, but it’s mostly in regular level classes and not in Honors. And I can guarantee that no one uses performance enhancing drugs for school— I’ve never even heard of that. Regarding pressure, all the pressure I have I put on myself. In my area, a lot of people commit to amazing colleges as early as sophomore year, and to me, it’'ll be disappointing if people who only have sports going for them get into schools like HYP over me.