Menlo Park and Palo Alto school districts are overrun with parents who want to push their child into advanced classes from the moment they can put sentences together. Having talked to many friends over the years who work in tech with me who grew up in these school districts (I didn't, my experience was very different), their parents constantly applied pressure to school administrators and counselors to push their child into advanced instruction. I know parents that would spend hours a day trying to pressure school administration to push their child along. I can only imagine this form of sandbagging is just to put the brakes on you and every other parent who wants to push their child as much as possible. You're competing against every other wealthy, pushy parent trying to push their children into advanced classes as well.