In any given classroom at St. Mary’s, the same questions can be heard: “Is this summative?”, “What score did you get?”, “What’s your GPA?”. While this obsession over numbers may seem normal to many St. Mary’s students, it is causing more and more students to practice unhealthy study habits.
As college admissions get more and more cutthroat, students’ obsession over GPA and test scores will continue to grow. IvyScholar, a top admissions counselling service, said that “Acceptance rates at top colleges have plummeted over the last decade (and more), with many elite schools seeing drops of 10-20 percentage points or more” (Chada). This pressure pushes students toward a narrow definition of success, one where every assignment feels high-stakes and where a single grade can overshadow actual learning.
But the culture of academic stress doesn’t end with GPAs. The constant comparisons: who scored highest on a chemistry quiz, who predicted a 7 on their IA, who has the most HLs. These comparisons create an environment where students measure themselves against their peers instead of focusing on their own growth. Collaboration comes second to competition. Many students avoid taking classes they might genuinely enjoy because they fear the impact it could have on their predicted scores. Over time, school becomes less about curiosity and more about survival.
One Junior who preferred not to be named said, “I feel like as soon as high school started, I’ve been more and more aware of my GPA. In a way, I feel like it motivates me to study harder, but it also creates a really toxic learning environment.”
This pressure has consequences far beyond academics. Emotional burnout is becoming increasingly common, with students sacrificing sleep, skipping meals, and forcing themselves through late-night study sessions just to keep up. For student-athletes, musicians, and those balancing extracurricular activities, the expectation to perform in every aspect of school life becomes overwhelming. And because St. Mary’s is such a small community, the competition feels even more personal, where every grade becomes another data point in an unofficial ranking system.
Mr. Douglas, a Humanities teacher at St. Mary’s, said, “This is only my second year at St. Mary’s, but what I’ve seen consistently this year and in the previous year is that formative assessments are often not taken seriously by students, and they only care about the summative assessments. I interpret [this] as students car[ing] less about the education than they do about the grades.”
A healthy amount of ambition is normal, even motivating. But when only the top few feel like they are succeeding, we create an environment that diminishes the confidence and mental health of the many who don’t feel that way. School should not be a race to outscore the people sitting next to us. It should be a place where learning helps us become better, not just higher-ranked.
