Depends on what stresses one. For some, one high stakes test is way less stressful than 4 years of extracurriculars, community service, and athletics, in addition to academics, to appeal to holistic admissions officers.
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Perhaps, though not for the various East Asian kids I know 
Perhaps, but we do not know how those same kids would have responded to the uncertainty and demands of holistic admissions. Perhaps they would be stressed regardless.
Perhaps they’d still have been stressed. But from what I’ve seen, not nearly as much on average. I’ll say no more.
I think that this idea that standardized testing instead of holistic admissions is the panacea for high school student stress ignores the levels of stress that are caused by these tests in the UK and other countries in which college admissions are mostly about exam results.
Academic pressure causes stress. The most stressful element of academics are exams. The more high stakes the exams are, the more stress they cause, and the longer that stress lasts.
In the UK, students first have to get good grades on their GCSEs in order to do A-Levels. That means that they are stress in 9th-10th grade because of the GCSEs, and then stressed in 11th-12th grade because of the A-levels.
Moreover, in the UK, the “prestige” of the university has a concrete effect on employment outcomes, and therefore the affects of A-level scores is more than just social cachet and bragging rights.
For an American students, a bad day, even on the day of the finals, will not derail their academic career. However, a bad day for a UK student which results in a 6 on the math GCSE can keep them from even studying for the Math A-level. Even if they are amazing at math, and they had a bad day, that’s it, no A-level studies in Math for them. And consequently, no admissions to any of the courses of study that have the Math A-level as a requirement, like CS. That is VERY stressful.
So no, a test-based system is no less stressful than the systems in the USA.
Is it more stressful? I don’t know, studies on these have not compared the two, as far as I know. Each country just has studies of the effect of their own system of stress and anxiety levels of their own students. Probably depends on the student.
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Since students are unlikely to have experienced both systems, we will never know.
However, you can test this in aggregate. After all, test subjects usually do not experience both the treatment and the placebo, yet this is how all medical treatments are tested.
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My two cents is the peak stress on kids in something like an A Level system is very high and pretty universal.
I think in theory, the combination of the sheer number of great colleges in the US and holistic review where fit actually matters and different kids can be great in different ways should make the US system less stressful.
And I think in practice, for some kids, actually many kids, that is true. They have a good idea what they want in a college, and what they need to do to get that, and then they do what they need and get what they want.
But then there are certain families and kids who in practice make it much more stressful. They define some highly selective school as their dream school, or define some highly selective group of schools (Ivy, T20, or so on) as their goal. And because if you choose schools that way, you can’t really know what you need to do to get admitted, it then becomes very stressful. And indeed, many will fail when the goal is defined this way.
And there may be no one point which is as stressful as A Level exams. But for these kids, everything can become stressful. Every class is about dream/Ivy/T20 admissions. Every activity. Every waking minute. What are you doing right now to be impressive to one of these colleges? Because if you aren’t doing that right now, you are falling behind the kid that is . . . .
Of course it doesn’t have to be that way. But some families/kids make it that way, and that is sad. Because to me that approach is really missing the true virtues of the US system.
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Here is an example of one… but it appears to me that other factors of the holistic review are outweighing the submission of test scores.
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I was working on a response which echoes yours-- and then I read yours and deleted mine because you said it so much more eloquently and accurately.
Neighbors kid- nice and hardworking. Parents insane about college (they are both very successful professionals but graduated from no-name undergrad and grad schools and believe they’d be billionaires if they’d gone to Wharton instead of “Humpety-Dumpty MBA at night” college.
So the D has been on the college treadmill since middle school, including a high priced counselor whose chief value seems to be touting fencing vs. tennis (kid loves tennis but was a C player; many fewer girls are fencing in my area so she progressed quickly even without a ton of talent) and pulling the kid out of summer camp (not impressive) and having her do various pre-professional “internships” which involved mom and dad calling their friends and getting the kid a quiet spot to make copies and coffee for a few weeks.
But nice kid.
By senior year she was a basket case to anyone who saw her- gained a lot of weight, hair falling out, that kind of thing. No eye contact when you talk to her.
And voila- she just started at a non-flagship branch of a state U in a neighboring state. It’s a fine institution- but honestly, nobody pays a counselor (let alone a high priced one) to game the system to end up there. The dozen or so mega reaches-- no. The half dozen match schools- also no. (EC’s don’t make up for grades and rigor-- how many times do we have to tell parents that?) And of the two safeties- the in-state one would have been a fall from grace, so she gets to cross state lines and pay more. I hope that being out of the cauldron of stress restores her sense of self.
So sure- our system is stressful. But it doesn’t NEED to be stressful. Every week you hear about someone who went from a literal clown college to medical school (after a lot of detours and miss fires) or someone who made partner at their white shoe law firm after community college to public U to Duke law school. We’ve got so many second and third and fifth chances built into our labor market- unlike other places in the world where your undergrad not only defines your profession- but defines WHERE in that profession you are going to sit. And if you don’t make it into a university on the conventional track- go do your military service and try and figure out a trade or apprenticeship you can tolerate.
It’s not so simple as “EC’s and SAT prep are stressful but entrance exams are not”.
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I would add a fourth factor: High school grading is more granular, and more difficult, making it easier to distinguish among top students.
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I guess I need to get over it, but cases like that literally bring tears to my eyes. It is like those stories where someone is trapped on the other side of a mirror in some nightmare world. Over on this side of the mirror, kids like that can have great childhoods that make them healthier, happier, and more confident, and they can go to a college which really makes sense for them and their family, and they can feel proud about what they have accomplished and excited about what comes next. And yet on their side of the mirror they are experiencing the sorts of things you described.
But we can just do what we can to get out the message that this side of the mirror exists, and hope that helps more kids end up over here.
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I’m with you!
To add to this, I would say that the “mirror” is much more commonly erected by the community and peers and the student themself than the parents. In our community, I would say less than 5% of kids go to an in-state public school. Everyone goes private or OOS. And the kids themselves have very clear academic/social hierarchies within the school. This is the inescapable nature of youth and HS. The kids in the top academic tier very much tie their sense of achievement to whatever college they get into.
No amount of well-meaning talks by guidance counselors or parents will alter this view. I think by the time a kid enters high school, the mirror is in place — largely based on what their school culture is like. I could make my child read the many many books out there promoting the idea that super selective colleges are not the end-all-be-all. But I highly doubt it would change her mind. She cares about what her peers are doing and thinking. And that’s normal for a 17 year old! We can’t expect teens to have the wisdom of a 50yo.
Not sure what my point is, maybe just that the surest way to avoid the other side of the mirror is to carefully choose where you live. But there are down sides to that as well. Choosing a locale that lacks a competitive environment can backfire in other ways, depending on the child.
Anyway, just want to point out that yes, parents can be a driver of this, but my experience is that there are a million other factors influencing this pressure cooker.
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Yeah, social circles are complicated, and peers over time tend to take over more influence from parents. I think this tends to happen the worst when pretty much everyone in a kid’s social circles are reinforcing the same view, but it can definitely happen anyway despite some people in a kid’s social circles trying to promote a different view.
Competition is such a tricky subject. Done right, it can be great for development and life lessons. Done wrong, or wrong for a particular kid, it can be ruinous. I personally think when it comes to college admissions, the key is to understand what actually counts as winning for a family and kid. Defined in an informed, rational, way, winning means the kid ending up at a college that will be great for them and comfortably affordable for their family. If you define it instead as getting into the most selective college, that is heading off in the really unhealthy direction.
But I agree there is only so much influence we have over how kids themselves will talk about these things.
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Totally agree! My kid was completely stressed out caught in the pressure cooker environment fueled by his competitive school and peers. My spouse and I got him off that treadmill this summer by constantly hammering that having fun in college, finding the right fit, and studying what you love is the most important thing to chase right now. I really wish we had started these conversations in middle school.
The magic happened when he found one school he loved that was ranked out of the T100. He loved it so much more than the T30 school he had just toured. It started to click.
The peer pressure is real, but Parents can definitely exacerbate or alleviate the stress.
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In a vacuum, yes. But how many of these non submitters are athletes or FGLI? That’s the piece that most people forget to account for. I will use Princeton because it’s the example I know. For the enrolled class of 2026 roughly 50% of athletes did not submit. That number was about 8% for the NARP group. It bares noting that Princeton still list test scores under “very important,” even if not required.
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It is magic-- and I love your characterization of that.
I’ve lived in communities where the pressure cooker is focused on looks, popularity, and athletic achievement (for both boys and girls) but the academic pressure is almost non-existent- and places where those other teenage things exist but aren’t nearly as important as the college pressure cooker/rankings/etc.
Both have ups and downs. I think sometimes people who live in the communities where the college pressure is intense minimize how awful it can be to be a teenager in a place where 14 year olds are clamoring for Oxempic, plastic surgery and hair extensions (everyone needs to look like Kardashian by junior year, apparently). Or how awful it can be to labeled a geek at age 10 because you aren’t interested in dating.
So yeah. No golden mean apparently. But in the same way that parents can promote body positivity, they can promote a more normal approach to academic achievement. And it will stick for some kids- and not for others.
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BTW, Princeton’s new frosh survey is out! Fascinating read. 48% of athletes had an SAT of 1390 or below. The median of submitted scores overall was 1540.
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That seems on par with last year.
Off to go look. I find the break downs between recruits, legacy, family earnings, public/private so interesting (and generally so misaligned with the how the country at large perceives the school)
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