College Expectations

Colleges expect way too much out of its students almost to the point of ridiculousness. It makes me upset that to get into any sort of competitive college, we need to be taking every AP class offered along with participating in ten different extra-curricular activities. They say that they want well-rounded individuals that will add to more than just the numbers of the school, but is that really what they want? Let's take Stanford for example. If you look at the academic profiles of the last few admitted classes, each student probably has a 4.5+ GPA, 2300 SAT scores and the ASB president at their respective school. My point is that colleges can't expect us to be well-rounded individuals if all we're focusing on is things to put on their college application. With such high competition, all we're doing in our high school years are studying, studying and studying with some E.C.s thrown in a couple times a week. Is it really worth giving up developing social skills and having fun just to get into Stanford? No; high school should be something that we all look back upon with positive memories and a smile knowing that we could be real teenagers.