Academic stigma & its impact on mental health

There are a million ways to start this, but I think it starts with how we, as a society, define college. In the majority of high schools, the better the “prestige” and the lower the acceptance rate is equivalent to a good education. Too much time is spent focusing on comparing an Ivy league to a community college. Yes, inevitably, an Ivy League education will give you more opportunities due to networking and famous alumni networks. However, in the bottom line, both schools give an education necessary to pursue a job in any given field. The idea of looking down at one who received a diploma from a community college/state school compared to a more selective school is frivolous. The stigma surrounding it leads to anxiety surrounding the topic of college and can cause people to feel bad about their acceptance into schools, which leads to people not appreciating their accomplishments, something everyone should be proud of. The competitiveness that has arisen out of this issue is substantial. At school, I feel like sometimes I’m just enveloped in this high tension, anxious state that defines our school environment. College is also not for everyone, and the pressure to just attend a 4 year college is extremely prevalent as well. Those who decide to have a gap year for their mental health after 4 straight years of hard work are seen in a negative light and this can push people to go into college straight away even if they are simply not ready for it. These pressures and expectations can have serious strains on adolescents, and teenagers are still figuring out who they are, as cliche as that sounds, and have to deal with going into emerging adulthood. These added pressures sometimes can be too much to handle and lead to stress, anxiety, being overwhelmed, etc. Even aspects of the college application process, such as our GPA, our extra curriculars, standardized testing, etc, have expectations and pressures associated with it. Something as miniscule as a numerical value can cause certain people to be judged or looked at differently. For instance, the idea that getting a 1500+ on the SAT is a good score is not the problem. The problem is with people assuming that anything below that is not considered a good score and instead somehow reveals the student’s smartness or potential to succeed in life. Statistics like tests and GPA should not be how one considers the emotional intelligence, potential, character, and intelligence of a student. They should be celebrated, but not utilized to pit students against each other, adding more to the college admissions “game” or something resembling the hunger games. This is exactly what has contributed to the rise in college admission scandals over the past years such as the recent Lori Loughlin case, due to the idea that to attend a college, one must have statistics that fall into the desired criteria or what is considered good. Sure, there will be scores not close to average, but instead of erasing the idea that one can improve and replacing it with the fact that they score badly leading to the idea that one will not succeed, we should focus on growth and how people learn from mistakes to flourish in life. At the end of the day, being a good person and how you affect the world should be given more importance and attention than getting straight A’s or high test scores.