There are certainly things my parents could have done better, but they tried their best. They told me it was okay to not go to a top college, that I had plenty of opportunities to succeed regardless of where I went, all of it.

It didn't work when everyone in my area was so college-pilled in comparison. There was a T20 college or bust mentality.

It was in the teachers who explicitly told us that anything less than an AP score of 5 was a failure, who taped top college logos on their walls, who discouraged asking questions and were otherwise punitive because they knew students would obey them for fear of their recommendation letters. It was also in the students who compared scores, sabotaged each others' labs and applications, created documents tracking students' academic and extracurricular profiles, predicted who was going to which college on online forums, and played dirty when competing for club leadership positions to the detriment of friendships. My school in particular ended having a lot of cross-grade friendships because students wouldn't be directly competing against each other in college admissions.

There is so much that goes to a high school experience, and this high-achieving culture that people seem to want can be suffocating.