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Pre-PSAT Pressures: Our Obsession With High School Success |
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By Kim Holachek
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 Kim Holachek, a 10th grader, is already beginning to feel nervous about the impending college admissions process. Here, she shares her impressions of the bizarrely competitive process: GPAs, extracurricular activities, gung ho parents, and the anxiety accompanying a sophomore’s first real taste of the college quest -- the PSATs.
Sighs of relief are being heard around George Mason High School; the PSATs are finally over. Pairs of lucky underwear are being washed and retired until next year’s SATs. For me, however, this sense of liberation was fleeting as I realized that I am not nearly as prepared as the hundreds (or even thousands) of college-obsessed sixteen-year-olds in the United States who have taken the same test within the past week.
Should I have begun to compete in a sport at age two to differentiate myself from the thousands of other mediocre cross-country runners? Even if I had decided to begin, say, ballet, midway through the sixth grade, there would have been no way to compete with the pint-sized prodigies who had been doing plies and arabesques before they could walk. What is our country coming to? Why are we dashing our children’s hopes of getting into an Ivy-league school when they realize that they are several years’ worth of toe-pointing and "tours chaînés déboulés" behind little Susie?
Then there are the obsessive parents that despite driving everyone crazy (teachers, other parents, their kids, other kids, everyone), may be doing their kids a favor by madly registering their children in multiple activities as toddlers. These are the parents who threaten to sue their kids’ fifth grade teacher when anything other than A’s come home on the report card. There are actually real instances of this. Ivan Hurd of Fresno, California just couldn’t take it that daughter Brandy received a B- in gym during her eighth grade year. I think we all can agree that what lies behind these actions are good intentions; what parents wouldn’t want their child to thrive? However, with the increasing level of difficulty to get into a top school, parents realize that only the best will succeed, thus falling into the maniacal routine of practically doing their child’s assignments and acting as homework Nazis in order to ensure that their kids are meeting the impossibly high academic expectations held by today’s society. Perhaps those kids are better prepared, however, for the traumatic phase of our lives that is high school.
Once we graduate from elementary school, we are pushed to take as many honors classes as our overworked little brains can handle, graduate with a 4.0 and even (try to contain your horror) take SAT prep courses as seventh graders. Many George Mason students are enrolled (or plan to enroll in) an SAT preparation course. When asked whether or not she planned to take one of these courses, GM sophomore Yali Lin remarked that she “wasn’t yet, but definitely was thinking about signing up for one over the summer.” When asked the same question, Caitlin DiMaina of Woodson High School solemnly informed me that she hadn’t planned on it, but once her parents received her PSAT scores from her freshman year (“They were abysmal!” her mother insisted), they immediately enrolled her in an SAT prep class.
As we entered our 10th grade year, we were hit by the realization that the SATs are right around the corner. These sentiments seemed to be unanimous throughout the sophomore population as the date of the PSATs quickly approached. We were very, very afraid. Books titled Master the SATs and Ten Ways To Up Your Score were anxiously exchanged in the hallways. Hair was twirled. Thumbs were twiddled. Nails were bitten. We apprehensively counted down the hours. The minutes. The seconds. And for what? A two-and-a-half hour test that is supposed to sum up our intelligence… a test that may be the basis upon which we are accepted or rejected from a college. A test that is now on its way to some official-looking building where they will tally up our scores, plug them into a computer, print them out, and stuff them into large, yellow, formidable looking envelopes to be mailed back to us (by then, I’m sure we will all be on the verge of nervous breakdowns.) Not so for those few who have been writing practice essays and preparing for the infamous analogy portion of the test since they were in diapers, though. I’m sure they’re all doing just fine.
With years of competitive activities, preparation for the PSATs, perfect GPAs, and heaping amounts of community service, there are plenty of other high schoolers to contend with in this struggle to get into a good college. Yet it would be much more gratifying to get into a top school with the knowledge that such an accomplishment was achieved without extensive aid. I can’t get too ahead of myself, though; I don’t want to raise my hopes too high. I’ll get back to you once the mailman hands me that reassuringly thick envelope.
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