By Gwen Lindsey

In recent years, college acceptance rates across the nation have been dropping. As a result, students are spending more of their youth trying to ensure their position at a prestigious university. Even if the students themselves don’t worry about everything they do—or don’t do—oftentimes parents, guardians or other adults in teenager’s lives pressure them to meet some arbitrary standard of success. This academic pressure is overrated because its negative impacts grossly outweigh the possible pros of getting into a “better” college. Extreme academic pressure can be extremely detrimental to youth mental health, and it often doesn’t even increase an applicant’s chances of being accepted into a college.

Even the most hardworking students labeled as having a “bright future” can fall victim to the effects of academic pressure. Countless high school students have maintained high GPAs, with sports, extracurricular activities, and even jobs. Because of these seemingly successful stories, the cycle of pressuring teens to perform to a certain standard remains. But, rates of depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses are extremely high amongst teens. Turning on the news, one can always find the heartbreaking story of a child who seemed to be doing just fine, who ended up taking their own life. Just because a building seems stable from the outside doesn’t mean there aren’t cracks growing in the foundation. But because they’ve been taught that grades and activities to list on a college application are of the utmost importance, students let their mental health fall through the cracks before their grades. Admission into a certain college should never be worth more than a life.

Clearly, academic pressure is a genuine physical danger to youth. Why, then, does it continue? Many say that it is only there to help students get into the college that they want to attend, and to “fulfill their potential.” However, with the current influx of college applications everywhere in the United States, completely qualified applicants are being denied due to a lack of space. No GPA, no extensive list of extracurriculars, no amount of community service hours, no perfectly crafted essay can ensure that a student will get into a college. Thus, the academic pressure proves itself to be unnecessary, as it is so often in vain. The college application process is unfortunate, but parents and teachers nationally neglect to inform students of its subjectivity. 

Academic pressure does not deserve its place in the lives of students across the country and around the world. Not only is it not effective in its attempted goal of “helping” students, but its effects on the mental health of youth render it overrated, even if it did help. No college is worth wasting youth cooped up at a desk on a computer. No college is worth missing precious time spent being a teenager. No college is worth a life.