by Cora Williamson
Durham School of the Arts
Didn’t you hear? Exceptional is the new average. Students taking advanced placement classes are no longer ahead, and a 4.0 gpa is the norm. It takes more than rigorous academics to be considered a good student.
“You get the highest GPA, you do everything, all the clubs, you get all the grades, you talk to teachers, you get letters of recommendations for all you go to all the different clubs, you do all these extracurricular activities,” Said Jaydon Jones, rising Senior at Durham School of The Arts in Durham, North Carolina.
With a drop in college acceptance rates, and a rise in academically outstanding students, the pressure is on for teens to go above and beyond in every aspect of their school careers. There are a lot of public universities that have become increasingly selective, most of them favoring only the top 10% of each class.
In 2016 the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill had a 26.9% acceptance rate which has decreased to a concerning 17.7% as of 2022. In more prestigious schools such as Duke, Dartmouth, Columbia, and Vanderbuilt there were percentage changes as large as -59% between 2014 and 2024.
With such stress inducing statistics, students around the nation have increased their AP courses, some taking as many as eight a year.
“ I don’t want to take something I’m not interested in. But now I’m like, if I had done that, I would have had a higher GPA, even if I wasn’t interested. So it’s weird… There’s definitely pressure to take classes you don’t want to take,” Said Norah Lubeck, a rising junior at Riverside High School in Durham, NC.
Norah Lubeck is one of the many students that go the extra mile and still feels behind in the race. Going into her junior year she is taking eight AP classes and three community college classes. Piling on 11 college level classes just to get a slight leg up. Yet she still feels that because she chose electives of interest in freshman year like photography and psychology instead of AP electives, she’s fallen below her peers.
“ I do have good support, but I also would say it could be better, because, for example, right now, I’m in the house all alone. Pretty much. And I can’t get outside. I can’t go and do things,” Jones said
According to statistics from Mental Health America, more than 4 million high school students experienced a depressive episode in 2022, and over 2.7 million high school students are experiencing severe depressive disorders. Balancing a social life, impressive academics, outside achievements, and sports, while experiencing hormonal imbalance is a lethal combination, and yet, it’s the expectation.
“People say, ‘ Oh, you don’t need to take APs. Oh, you do. Or like, Oh, you should follow your interests.’ And then some people are like, ‘Oh, you need to have a specific track’. But if it’s not AP, it doesn’t matter.’ Lubeck said. “ People are just saying so many conflicting things that it confuses you on what you need to be doing. And I think that distracts from what you want to be doing, which I think is the most important thing.”
It’s a familiar peril among almost every student to feel deterred from their passions because they move all their energy into doing anything they can to make themselves stand out to colleges.
“Thinking forward, I want to go to college, and I have no idea if what I have right now is good enough to get me into a college I want to go into, especially compared to people who may be at the top of the class.” Lubeck said.
A large contributor to the weight burdening students is the ambiguity of what colleges are looking for. It’s often drilled into young minds that you need to be ahead in STEM courses, participating in at least one sport, earning some sort of leadership spot and volunteering, all while maintaining a 4.0 GPA. But depending on the college some may not accept certain AP credits, and being in too many extracurriculars can be seen as noncommittal.
“The pressure comes from all sides, and you have no idea if what you’re doing is enough. And you just gotta keep doing more even if it’s brainless work.” Lubeck said.
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