On Oct. 17, 2024, families at Harvard-Westlake School were devastated by another academics-related suicide in a distinct pattern of similar instances. This is the striking reality in many of the nation’s top pre-collegiate academic institutions.
A 2023 Fordham University study found that an environment of competition significantly predicted anxiety and depression among teenage students. As teenagers develop an attitude of hyper-competitiveness throughout their progression in high school, collaboration is disregarded for an instinctual tactility. Consequently, peer-to-peer support becomes a rarity, and the communal nature that defines modern schooling begins to fray.
Intuitively, this fixation on self-sustenance, driven by an unhealthy academic environment, only further increases competition among peers, fostering a harsh and perpetual cycle of comparative anxiety. While the most significant effects of this issue are visible through often sensationalized news headlines, the invisible emotional erosion of everyday students is usually absent from traditional media reports.
This erosion manifests through the student who skips lunch to finish college supplements, the one who tears up over a B+, the friend who disappears from group chats during decision season. These situations represent the fruits of a culture that normalizes distress in the name of highly improbable perfection. When students internalize the belief that value lies in prestige and that to fall short of an Ivy League acceptance is to fail, they forget the intrinsic nature of self-worth and crumble. The nation’s top five most prestigious institutions, as ranked by US News, boast an average acceptance rate of 4.4%. To illustrate, this represents approximately six students out of a typical graduating class of 150. When self-worth is tied to these improbable outcomes, even brilliance feels like insufficiency.
A solution to the academic crisis begins with acknowledging the culture that dictates it. Policymakers and educators alike must take actionable steps to redefine the competitive nature of schooling. States can implement mental health days as excused absences. Schools can implement an expanded social-emotional learning curriculum that fosters collaboration. Educators can encourage students to collaborate on assignments in and out of class.
However, the greatest and most demanding solution must come from the constituents of education themselves: the students and parents. While most pressure is born of love, the message students receive is often of conditional acceptance. It is imperative to encourage students to pursue their interests, take breaks, and recognize that their self-worth goes beyond a letter grade or college acceptance—it is inherent and untethered to achievement.
Competition is an ever-increasing non-negotiable in modern society. However, meaningful steps can be taken to regain balance between competition and compassion. School should be a place of exploration and growth, not an unrelenting chamber of pressure.
