The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids Get Rabate

Title : The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids
Category: General
Brand: Hachette Books
Item Page Download URL : Download in PDF File
Rating : 3.9
Buyer Review : 97

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"You can't just be the smartest. You have to be the most athletic, you have to be able to have the most fun, you have to be the prettiest, the best dressed, the nicest, the most wanted. You have to constantly be out on the town partying, and then you have to get straight As. And most of all, you have to appear to be happy." -- CJ, age seventeen

High school isn't what it used to be. With record numbers of students competing fiercely to get into college, schools are no longer primarily places of learning. They're dog-eat-dog battlegrounds in which kids must set aside interests and passions in order to strategize over how to game the system. In this increasingly stressful environment, kids aren't defined by their character or hunger for knowledge, but by often arbitrary scores and statistics.

In The Overachievers, journalist Alexandra Robbins delivers a poignant, funny, riveting narrative that explores how our high-stakes educational culture has spiraled out of control. During the year of her ten-year reunion, Robbins returns to her high school, where she follows students, including CJ and others:

• Julie, a track and academic star who is terrified she's making the wrong choices;
• "AP" Frank, who grapples with horrifying parental pressure to succeed;
• Taylor, a soccer and lacrosse captain whose ambition threatens her popular girl status;
• Sam, who worries his years of overachieving will be wasted if he doesn't attend a name-brand college;
• Audrey, who struggles with perfectionism; and
• The Stealth Overachiever, a mystery junior who flies under the radar.

Robbins tackles hard-hitting issues such as the student and teacher cheating epidemic, over-testing, sports rage, the black market for study drugs, and a college admissions process so cutthroat that some students are driven to depression and suicide because of a B. Even the earliest years of schooling have become insanely competitive, as Robbins learned when she gained unprecedented access into the inner workings of a prestigious Manhattan kindergarten admissions office. A compelling mix of fast-paced storytelling and engrossing investigative journalism, The Overachievers aims both to calm the admissions frenzy and to expose its escalating dangers.

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Review :
I know this feeling -- I am right in the middle of this now
Let me give a personal perspective on The Overachiever "phenomenon." I am about to start a year off before college because of the extreme mental and physical toll high school took on me.

I took on too much throughout high school because my father pushed me. I interned at a biotech company, I headed three clubs at school, I took a full load of AP classes, and I missed lunch each day. I routinely stayed up all night, or slept 2 or 3 hours, to fit it all in and maintain my grades.

Red Bull was my life. Coke didn't do it anymore. Neither did coffee.

And then one day I passed out in the hallway at my house, and wound up in the hospital for two weeks with an irregular heartbeat from all the caffiene. I was so worn out, so out of shape, such a mess.

And you know what my father's first reaction was? "You're never going to get into Harvard if you're in this hospital and missing all this school!" I kicked him out of the room and cried. I...
A Sneak Preview of Your Future Doctor, Lawyer, President
The Overachievers profiles nine students at one of the top public schools in the country. Most of the students are from wealthy families and do not need to worry about how they will pay for college. In fact, most of them are not actually worried about getting into college so much as getting into the Right College. You know, Harvard, Yale, Stanford. So why would I care about these kids? They have it made, and if they are stressing out about whether they are accepted into Princeton or have to settle for Duke, well boo hoo.

And yet I found I was very interested in what happened to these students. Alexandra Robbins (who attended this very high school and then Middlebury College and then graduate school at Yale) tells the stories from the students' perspectives. In between finding out what is motivating these teenagers, Robbins explores a host of relevant subjects: peer pressure, family pressure, No Child Left Behind, the SAT and AP exams, prescription drugs (especially...
Recollections from an "average" kid...
The author's writing style does an excellent job of bringing these young people to life, and it seems easier to feel sympathy for these youngsters than it was to empathize with the rather bitchy young adults she described in "Pledged".

But Walt Whitman is not only a school for highly achieving, stressed-out, Ivy League strivers. It is also a school for average kids, quiet kids, goths, drug users, dope sellers, artists, devoutly religious kids, and single-pointed nerds who are the farthest thing from the polished, well-rounded, resume kings and queens portrayed in this narrative. At least, it was when I attended the school and graduated nearly twenty years ago, and to a large extent, it probably still is today.

The average students are rarely featured in the narrative, except in terms of their relationships with the overachievers, but it would have been interesting had the author focused a little more on how an elite public school like Walt Whitman shapes the...