Pressure, insomnia and hospitalization: The new normal for students applying to college

April 03, 2019 / 5:17 pm

When you think of high school, you might imagine football games, awkward school dances and teenagers trying to figure out who they are.

High school, as students will likely tell you, is far from this. For many students, the grades they receive in classes matter more than what they actually learned.

When RadioActive's Lila Shroff, Meghana Kakubal and Soraya Marashi started talking about their own high school experiences, they noticed a common trend: students sacrificing their personal well-being in exchange for the perfect GPA or an acceptance letter to the college of their dreams.

I would cry in the hospital bed not thinking, am I going to die? I was crying because my grades were slipping. I was losing that Stanford dream. Keya Roy

Pre-test anxiety, mental breakdowns, lack of sleep and contagious cheating all seem to be normalized in high school classrooms.

In this episode of RadioActive Youth Media, Lila, Meghana and Soraya explore the detrimental effects of the “prestige-arms race” on high school students. They talk to everyone from current high school students and teachers to admissions officers and college professors to explore the impacts of prestige and the pressure to be the best. How is the pressure of getting into the best college affecting an entire generation of students?

This story was created in KUOW's RadioActive Advanced Producers Workshop for teenagers, with production support from Kamna Shastri. Edited by Jeannie Yandel.

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