My hat’s off to Palo Alto High School (aka Paly) for stopping the demeaning “End-of-the-School-Year Map” in their high school paper The Campanile this year. This map pointed out which colleges each senior planned to attend the following year accompanied by a list of students’ names with their respective colleges. Ouch! As if it wasn’t bad enough that all of the seniors knew which colleges you didn’t get into; but to have an official list in the school paper was tortuous to many students.
With Stanford University just up the street, many Paly students are children of professors or Silicon Valley executives. Palo Alto students receive top-notch education in their public schools – better than many private schools in the area. There’s a lot of pressure on these students to take excessive amounts of AP classes and engage in extracurricular activities. When SAT or ACT scores are released, everyone knows who got perfect scores. I remember meeting with one of my clients just 20 minutes after the SAT scores were released. She walked into my office sobbing – so I assumed she bombed the SAT – but was taken aback when she told me she got a 2380 (out of 2400). Apparently everyone shared their scores within minutes and she learned that 7 other students at her school received a perfect 2400. Imagine being upset with a 2380?