Analysis of “The Overachievers” Free Essay Example

College application season can be the most demanding amount of time for any high school trainee. The combination of remorse for refraining from doing much better in school, doubt in your own possibilities of admission, and the worry of rejection is enough to recover cost the most steady students. Author Alexandra Robbins, however, realized that the stress of college admission starts well in the past, along with sticks around well after, the real application period. Through her observations, she concludes that the existing education system is transforming students into GPA-obsessed, narrow-minded beings, and that the stresses of using to a so-called “prominent” university have a plethora of negative adverse effects.

Her first argument concerns how colleges and the whole application system as a whole is methodically turning flesh and blood students into merely sets of numbers. She discusses how trainees nowadays are just concerned about 3 numbers: their SAT scores, their GPAs, and their class ranks. She goes on to discuss that the fixation with these three numbers is triggering trainees to lose sight of what high school is really suggested for; getting a sufficient discovering experience while preparing oneself for the trials of college life.

Instead, high school has ended up being a mad dash for the finest opportunities of being accepted into colleges. This trait is exemplified in AP Frank who, forcefully urged by his mother, took all 17 AP classes Whitman high need to use, an unthinkable work that required he skip his lunch duration everyday.

Going off on a tangent, Robbins likewise makes a point about the “no kid left” policy and seriously slams it for forcing instructors to focus more on test ratings rather than actually mentor.

Early in the book, Robbins personifies her aversion to turning trainees into numbers in the type of college admissions therapists. She thinks that this group of people is the epitome of why the application systems are so flawed, and very first puts forth this concept by presenting the reader to Julie’s college therapist, Vera. Vera is so consumed about her individual image and is so convinced that Julie will never ever be accepted into her dream college based exclusively on her grades and test scores that she drops Julie as a client.

Robbins’ second argument that makes multiple appearances throughout the course of the book is the assertion that the high amounts of stress experiences by high school students today is actually deadly. In the quest to be accepted into a prestigious college, students today take workloads that at times is too much, causing them to mentally snap. In this case, an unimaginable workload is put onto AP Frank by his oppressive mother, which Robbins states is quite common in East Asian countries, but not all the overachievers have had their workload put onto them. Audrey, the perceived “Perfectionist” doesn’t necessarily have as many reasons to be stressed as some of her classmates, but her mental state of having to do everything perfectly causes her to be under unnecessary stress.

For example, it wasn’t mandatory that she spend all of her weekends and free time constructing the perfect bridge for her physics class, but her tendency to always want to be the best made it so. She spent time in which she could have been relaxing or decompressing on working vigorously. The resulting stress has been known to cause student suicide rates to rise around the world. Back at home, Julie also feels the effects as she notices that her hair has begun to fall out. She dismisses it as merely the side effects of her academically demanding life, but what she fails to realize is that stress-induced symptoms are the first signs of serious permanent damage and an increased likelihood that she will one day mentally break.

Overall, Robbins points out increasingly detrimental flaws in our current education system, such as turning students into data and burdening them with potentially fatal workloads. She also presents the information in a sense that allows the reader to connect with the students of Whitman High on an emotional level, which, in the long run, better help the reader understand the severity of the situation.

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