I think that the obsession with "doing well" is by no means an exclusively American trait. Just look at the Indian obsession with IIT-JEE, or Koreans with the C

I think that the obsession with "doing well" is by no means an exclusively American trait. Just look at the Indian obsession with IIT-JEE, or Koreans with the CSAT, or the English with A-levels, or the French with the bac. American students, in my opinion, don't really obsess more about our system that anyone else.