The Neuroses Of Ivy League High Schoolers

I went to a high school that had a high percentage of students go to Ivy League schools. Here’s why I’d never let my kid go there.

In recent years, I’ve felt a need to talk about my high school’s culture. This school is an invitation-only vocational school that regularly finds its spot in the top three of my home state of New Jersey.

The more I look at things, the more I realize that someone needs to speak up about the level of schooling people are expecting of kids. And more importantly, we need to talk about a very pervasive culture of loathing building up in academia.

I’m not sure whether I’ve mentioned this before, but I was not a happy kid growing up. A large part of it was the way that academia got shoved down my throat.

Let me talk about my high school.

My high school was not a normal high school. It was a high school that took academia to a batshit insane level. Everything about it was geared towards exclusivity. In fact, only a handful of kids from each town were allowed in.

It was invite-only and free to the enrolled. In order for kids to get an invitation, you have to have near-perfect scores, take a specialized entry test, and also write an essay about why you deserve this spot.

Why was it so hard? Well, it was the prestige of the school. Out of my class year of 60 students, about 10 went to Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Cornell, or other Ivy schools.

Almost all of us took college courses at the local community college — and yes, it was for college credit too. Many of these courses, if not all of them, were in STEM. Needless to say, we were the “genius school” of our county.

That school’s still there, and it’s only gotten more competitive. Last time I checked, the competition for a single seat at school would have between 30 to 40 student applications.

For the record, I fucking sucked at that school and was in the bottom third of the class. So, no, I’m not trying to brag. I’m trying to explain the level of absurd competition that this stupid shithole had.

I don’t like that school style and would never suggest it to a parent.

You might be asking what the problem is. Well, it’s a problem that is actually pretty pervasive among families who lean into education for everything and anything.

Many people know this parenting style as the “Tiger Mom” style of parenting. However, this term is actually derived from Amy Chua’s memoir of being in a similar environment that I grew up in.

I realize this may be a loaded term, but it’s the only term I can really say encapsulates what I dealt with as a student. I really wish there was another way to explain it that doesn’t involve Asian households, simply because most of the guilty parties weren’t Asian and it’s not right to frame it that way.

This parenting philosophy has its roots in Chinese philosophy and has since been linked to serious damage done to kids. Today, the vast majority of Asian-American parents have switched over to a more supportive and loving parenting style. I’m all for it.

I want to point out that not all Asian parents act this way, and that not all Tiger Moms (in the sense of what I describe in my writing below) are Asian. Actually, the ones who were the worst at my high school were all white. So, take from that what you may.

What does tiger parenting mean for kids?

Allow me to explain something about many elite schools like the one I went to: it gives you a stark look into what a world where most kids have tiger parents. What does this look like? Well…

• The amount of love many of these kids receive at home is directly correlated to their grades. I’ve seen what this does to a person, even among my own relatives. It sucks when your parents drill into you that they only love you when you’re outdoing everyone else around you. You get desperate for perfection.
• Students are bingeing on extracurriculars and also doing volunteer work. At first glance, it seems great that Sally is on the soccer team, forensics, math league, theater, and cheerleading at the same time. Oh, and Sally is volunteering with the local hospital. Unfortunately, this means Sally has no downtime and no time to rest.
• Many kids at my school don’t get to choose what they want to do in life. I, along with others from this school, were often pushed into schools and fields of study that we loathed. And we felt broken because we didn’t like our predetermined path or didn’t fit in.
• Many parents openly forbid having their kids hang out with underachievers. Among some students, the idea of having a normal social life at all was barred from you. This is what happened to me and my best friend in elementary school. It was a “distraction” from your studies.
• Social skills take the back seat, often with devastating consequences. If you have ever met someone who was seriously emotionally stunted but had a perfect 4.0 on their Bachelor’s degree, this is probably what happened. Most of my friends who were like this are unemployed, permanently single, and extremely anxious to this day.
• Privacy is not something you may get. I know of at least three students that had parents monitoring their phone and internet, even back in the 2000s. Back in the 90s, my best friend’s mom would listen over the phone to our conversations and we’d have to talk in code.
• Eating disorders are rife among girls. There’s something about being able to push the numbers down on a scale that gives people a sense of control. It’s part perfectionism, part a need to control stuff. Needless to say, I saw a lot of it in academia and suffered from it myself.

What does this do to students?

Unless you’ve been at a school geared towards tiger parenting, you can’t imagine the level of pressure that these kids are under. People hammer it into you that your entire worth is based on your test scores and extracurriculars. Who do you want to be or your personality? Not an issue unless it’s an extra.

From the day you apply until the day you graduate, everyone is telling you that every little tiny thing you do will dictate your success in life in every arena. You’re told that if you’re anything less than a straight A+ student with a massive resume, you’re nothing.

What does this really mean in the minds of these kids? I’ll give you a couple of examples:

• Got a B average? Well, we know who’s not going to Princeton. I guess you’re okay flipping burgers or being middle management in a chain restaurant. You failed your parents.
• Getting an A-? Oh, your mom is going to tell you you’re slipping and that you’re an embarrassment. Say goodbye to that sleepover you planned for weeks and pray to whatever deity that Princeton admissions will be kind to your sorry ass.
• Getting a C? Oh, that means you won’t be able to support yourself, you’ll be a beggar and you’ll die alone because no one will ever love you. After all, you can’t make $100,000 a year with a C, so you’re useless to anyone who wants to marry you.

How do I know this? Oh, because I’ve heard these phrases and concerns from my ex-classmates. Some of these were also my own personal concerns at one point in my life.

Were all of the kids in this school like this? Obviously not. Me and one of my close longtime friends (we still hang out, by the way) were not as shaken by grades. We just kind of learned to do what we wanted.

But yeah, this is an attitude that I only realized wasn’t normal fairly recently. I thought everyone was like this, even when I was in college. It’s strange how hindsight works.

The moment where I realized how bad this happened in Calculus.

We all got our tests back one day and I remember hearing something behind me. It then came out as a loud, choking sob. I turned around and this girl Allie* had her face all red and she was crying her eyes out.

The girls around her were trying to hold her and console her. I asked what’s wrong. She lifted up her paper, and it was a 92. A 92 out of 100, mind you.

I stared at my 76 since I had already stopped giving a shit about school at this point and accepted that I was a failure in the eyes of everyone around me.

“Fucking really?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said.

But I did. Trust me, I did understand. Low key, I worried what that girl was going to go home to. Her anxiety, much like many other peoples’ around her, was through the roof.

Later on, when I was hanging out in Princeton…

Yes, I dated a guy from Princeton. It was short-lived because I was roaming the streets with my friends from the underground and he was still prim and proper. I mean, as prim and proper as a dining club gets in Princeton.

When he and I were alone, he told me about how his mom used to beat him for grades that were subpar. He admitted that he still had serious anxiety as a result. And truth be told, he was a people-pleaser too.

If it sounds like the people around me were fucked up, it’s because they were. Too many people in this culture of academia end up having serious problems — problems that take years and years of therapy to undo.

And this is, of course, if they even graduate from the school of their choice. A lot of the smartest people I knew died from overdoses or suicide due to the pressures they faced.

It’s a laundry list of neuroses you’ll see here. There’s constant anxiety over earnings, the feeling that your resume makes you worthy of love, and the trauma of conditional love from your parents to deal with. I could go on and on.

But, don’t expect any Ivy students to ever actually say this stuff out loud.

Rare is the person in an elite school who openly talks about the abuse and hurt they endure to make it in these systems. Rare, too, is the Ivy League student who admits they’re not doing well. It’s a taboo aspect of the life.

You see, you just don’t do that in those circles. It’s one of those things that is supposed to be brushed under the rug in Ivy cultures. The dialogue about depression and mental illness that you get from this lifestyle has only recently started to come up.

Parents, please don’t do this to your kid.

These kinds of schools are generally not healthy for people. There’s a reason why Princeton’s suicide rate is double that of the general population and why over 36 percent of Harvard students use hard drugs. Most people think that Princetonites and elite schoolers have a carefree life.

This is not true. Quite the opposite in many cases. For every success story like Zuckerberg and Bush, there are at least 10 people who are working high-end careers that are causing them misery. Even with all their prestige, I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes.

But, what would I know? I was just one of them for a while.