Response to Helicopter Parents Can't Really Fly

I disagree with this article to an extent. I went to a highly competative college prep school so everything was a competition,rank, extracurricular activities, gpa, and sat scores. We never stopped hearing the word college in high school. It was always about getting into the best possible college with a scholarship. People would venture out in our school to find the weirdest and strange extracurricular activities to make themselves stand out. Often times, students did not get these extracurricular's by their own hardwork, but through their parent's connections. It was a way for them to get into the best college. My high school never offered regular high school courses everything was a rapid course and it was unacceptable and it was below average to take one AP Class. Our counselors, parents and teachers forced us to sign up for AP Classes that we would have to compete with other kids to get into because of a preliminary examination. Some kids had to get their parents to call because they did not get into the course based on the exam; however our school would not let them into the course. All of us were required to do 50 hours of community service each year to ensure that community service would be on our college applications, without completing the 50 hours of community service you could not pass a grade. Many of us were forced into community service positions we did not want to be in, and learning subjects that were of no interest to us only because we wanted the 1.2 credit in our gpa. Besides this most of us had parents who were very ambitious and made sure we enrolled in various courses and extracurriculars despite how much we hated them. In some cases, their parental helicopter worked and we got into amazing colleges but for others it backfired. Some people were burned out completely by Junior Year by taking so much stress, and they actually did worse junior year. Also by senior year, after college applications were in,, students slacked off so much because we worked so hard three years before to ensure we got into the colleges of our choice.