Speaking of high school grade systems, my school had grades out of 100. Talk about unnecessary competitiveness (both with yourself and others). I obsessed ove

Speaking of high school grade systems, my school had grades out of 100. Talk about unnecessary competitiveness (both with yourself and others). I obsessed over getting 97s and 98s rather than 94s and 95s. While we weren't officially ranked, it was well known that out of 700-800 students in your class, a 98 average put you in the top 5, and a 94 put you somewhere in the top 100-200. Because the school released college admissions statistics (in the format of GPA | SAT | accepted/rejected/waitlist), you could see that you have empirically little chance of getting into Harvard with that 94, but a very very good chance with that 98. That said, most people were generally very smart, passionate and inspiring people to be around. They actually cared about at least some subset of what they were learning. But a lot of the work was pure grind, and to impose that on a bunch of smart creative people is a shame.