In the United States, access to higher education is becoming increasingly common and prevalent. More students are trying to squeeze themselves into the limited seats of selective colleges, an accomplishment that would seemingly make his or her chronically stressful high school experience a tangible one. Consequently, as the number of students applying to selective universities increase, the acceptance rates of these universities decrease. In 1988, Ivy League school Columbia University had an acceptance rate of 65%. Currently, their acceptance rate is a mere 7%, illuminating the frenzy that students and parents experience while applying to colleges. College enrollment rates have overall skyrocketed from 26% to 41% over the past three decades.
This competitive environment created for high school students implores them to believe that they need to stand out in order to be accepted. The selective universities have developed a highly subjective method of determining who they want to fill their classes. They use race, gender, income, and legacy as a means of creating a diverse and well-rounded class. Rejecting students merely based on trivial characteristics such as those can be detrimental to his or her mental health and can cause anxiety, chronic stress, depression, and even suicide.
The challenging obstacle of impressing the college admissions office creates high stress levels in students which can be counterproductive in some. The current stress levels at high-pressure high schools are alarming to many scientific professionals. Researchers from New York University completed a study that explores these stress levels. After analyzing the results, senior researcher Noelle Leonard concluded, “We are concerned that these students in these selective, high-pressure high schools can get burned out even before they reach college.” The study discovered that out of the students at 128 different private schools, 46% confirm having to complete over three hours of homework each night. 49% of all students say they feel an excessive amount of stress and that the sources are grades, homework and college prep. Frighteningly, over one-fourth of the participants report that they experience symptoms of depression at clinically high levels. Overall, pressure on students to get into a good college creates a stressful and depressing environment.
In order to get into a prestigious university, students feel the need to create unique dimensions to themselves. Suzy Lee Weiss, a high school student rejected from every Ivy League school wrote in the Wall Street Journal that colleges want you to be yourself “as long as yourself has nine extracurriculars, six leadership positions, three varsity sports, killer SAT scores, and two moms.” This article gained widespread media attention for its satirical grains of truth in the eyes of many Americans. High schools students all over the country try to crack the code of which courses and activities are the “right” ones to be apart of. School counselor Sharon Sevier says that this perception “can really impact a student’s stress level and make high school a lot more competitive than it needs to be.” Teenagers are learning more quickly that who they really are as a person is not good enough to be accepted into an elite university and therefore they try to falsify their life and personality.
The principle of needing to be superior to all peers, taught to high school students applying to colleges, almost always follows the student to the university they get into. Insecurities emerge in students as they meet all of the outstanding classmates that also were accepted. The schoolwork is difficult and they begin to question why they are there in the first place. Dr. Anthony L. Rostain, pediatric psychiatrist on Penn State University’s faculty states that the real danger of high-achieving students is in the way in which they react to not succeeding. He explains, “Instead of thinking, ‘I failed at something,’ these students think, ‘I am a failure.’”
These thoughts of depression, if kept hidden, can result in a student taking their own life if their high expectations of themselves are not met. The national suicide rate of 15-24 year-olds has increased steadily since 2007 and many elite schools experience half a dozen student suicides in one academic school year. Sadly, the immense pressure of college preparation in high school follows students to college and creates severe mental health issues in many.
Thus, students need more encouragement to follow what they are truly interested in and to stop comparing themselves to peers. The pressure that is currently afflicted on high school students hurts them a lot more than it helps them.
