Perhaps it’s the school’s proximity to one of the nation’s best public universities, but, at Chapel Hill High School, it is viewed as the norm to have an excruciating workload. Honors classes may as well be the standard, and the student ranked #1 in the senior class has a 4.8 GPA.
The average number of AP classes for a school in America to offer is eight, according to the website College Transitions. Chapel Hill High School has over 30.
I, along with many of my peers, have struggled immensely with the overly competitive nature of the school.
“It feels like no matter what you’re doing, it’ll never be enough,” senior Mia Kalish said. “Even if you’re overachieving, there will always be 10 people who are working harder.”
The college application process brought a lot of ignored issues of mine to the forefront, all of which surrounded the emphasis I placed on prestige and intellectual performance.
I began to feel that I could have done more throughout my high school career. I metaphorically kicked myself for only taking a few APs, completely ignoring the reasons as to why I had chosen to take the specific classes I did: it’s more important to retain some sense of happiness and sanity than to look good on paper.
I feel that a lot of students (and parents, for that matter) need to learn that educational prestige is not all that matters.
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools district has tried to combat this. In 2021, the “no zeros” policy was put into effect, in which missed/failed assignments are entered into the gradebook as nothing lower than a 50 out of 100. The policy makes it harder for students to fall behind and easier to recover from low grades.
Unfortunately, the policy has done very little to change the attitude of our student body: it’s the equivalent to throwing a Pepsi on a kitchen fire.
Will we ever be able to fix this issue? The answer is complicated. While it’s near impossible to shift the mindset of an entire community, there are small things that can be done to curb the intensity of the competition in our district.
A good starting point for our school system may be to enact a cap on the number of AP classes a student is allowed to take, especially early in their high school career.
When I was a freshman in 2018, I was told that I was not supposed to take APs until my sophomore year. Now, our school permits students to take several college-level courses fresh out of middle school. Though allowing freshmen to take APs was a state decision, it only added to the competitive nature of our school.
One reason this issue is so difficult to combat is that it is a generational curse. The over-emphasis of grades is not solely the fault of the schools—it is also brought on by parents who want the best possible future for their children.
“My parents made me take AP classes really early on, and I think it did more harm than good,” senior Mary Menelik said. “I wasn’t ready for that transition from middle to high school. I think it set me up for disaster because I wasn’t taking those classes for myself; I was taking them for my parents.”
Though academic success is important and is a factor in achieving a successful future, it is not worth damaging a student’s self-esteem, mental health and quality of life. The near toxic, overly competitive nature of our school system contributes to a hostile, discouraging environment that pits students against one another in an unnecessary battle of intelligence.
Change needs to be made on a systemic level to encourage students to try their hardest, while also giving themselves a break and not judging others for their grades and educational prestige.
