The movies would call it the perfect time for both discovering oneself and meeting lifelong friends. Characterized by football games with peppy cheerleaders, parties, adolescence, and a whole lot of attitude, it’s truly a place for both fun and growth—as the time before adulthood should be.

But when taking a step back from the glittering utopia found in High School Musical, the much larger picture of the life of a high school student comes into focus. In environments promoting college and career-oriented education, students feel an impending pressure to excel in school, closing doors on the possibilities of entertainment and opening those of libraries, tutorial centers, laboratories, and SAT testing rooms.

This is often the paradox adolescents find themselves battling in the Bay Area, where Silicon Valley’s towering innovation and technological prowess converge and color the world with dreams of tomorrow. Yet, beneath this facade of possibility is an alarming reality. Because in this landscape where high achievement is seen as a birthright and success is measured in algorithms and accolades, students are the ones shouldering the cost of living up to these overwhelming expectations.

In the Bay Area, excellence is the norm. As junior Amaia Thompson says, “I feel like as soon as you get into high school you have to be amazing at everything and be perfect or else you won’t get into college.” This unrealistic expectation takes a substantial toll on students’ mental health; the Bay Area has exceptionally high levels of teen stress, depression, and suicide. Upwards of 40% of teens report significant mental distress in the Bay Area. 

Moreover, the frequency of suicide clusters (three or more suicides in close succession in the same area) has increased over the past two decades. The city of Palo Alto, for example, had five consecutive suicides in 2015 and experiences a teen suicide rate five times that of the national average. These tragic reports all point to the fact that students in the Bay Area have an abnormal amount of academic pressure—all a result of what some call “the cult of success.”

Much of the time, this stems from the expectation of being admitted into a selective university. In the United States, 52% of high school students say they feel pressured to make decisions about their future too soon, and this number only grows larger when put in the context of the Bay Area’s relentless pursuit of excellence.

College essays are just another example of the problem. The application process was once used so colleges could get to understand their applicants as people. However, the process has become just another way for students to advertise themselves as the ideal scholar rather than using these prompts to present their true qualities.

“I based my entire life on academic and athletic validation because that’s what I’ve been told would get me into college. For the longest amount of time, I didn’t have any friends because I always had extracurriculars that got in the way of us hanging out,” reflects junior Aishi Vijayaraghavan—representing just how detrimental the single-minded focus on college can be. The tunnel vision of being accepted into a college that would supposedly fulfill one’s dreams often eclipses the pursuit of happiness.

In addition, high school students in today’s world often have a narrow definition of success and live in a fiercely competitive, Darwinian school environment. Rather than prioritizing learning and developing themselves as people, many students place their focus on simply getting good grades or outdoing their peers. To make matters worse, college standards for students have increased —a grade lower than an A can ruin everything at a top school. As college acceptance rates go down, adolescent well-being follows suit. 

Being surrounded by competitive peers in a success-oriented environment, high schoolers in the Bay Area are further inclined to push themselves harder in every class or activity that fills their plate. “Comparison is a double-edged sword,” says freshman Vrishank Ram. “It can take you to the farthest heights or your lowest points.” In essence, it allows students to tie self-worth to academic performance and choose besting peers over happiness, making them lose out on the high school experience.

All of this raises a critical question: how can we address the pressures on Bay Area high school students? Considering this alarming narrative, it is crucial society recalibrate its priorities, firstly by eliminating the need to aim for top Ivy League schools.

Society currently places too much emphasis on elite education, but evidence shows how little these labels actually matter. The income of Ivy graduates only exceeds that of their counterparts at good state schools by 3%, a marginal increase that does not correlate to the status students grant to such universities. Thus, college hardly matters in the way we often think it does, and eradicating the pressure to attend a name-brand school could truly ease the pressures many high school students feel.

So ultimately, though it may not be the best solution to dance our problems away like in High School Musical, it’s time to click the toggle on Canvas grades and reopen the door to what high school should be: a time for growth and having fun.