Note that this is specifically for kids who do show promise.
The educational Red Queen Race that S.Korea and China have been famous for -- with childhoods utterly dominated by schooling and "extracurriculars" -- is now also an American thing. It's hard on kids, hard on parents, and the real educational benefit is less than zero. (In that kids would genuinely be better off without excess schooling and with more self-directed free time.)
The Ivy League path is simultaneously ultra-high-stress and ultra-conventional. It's no longer a golden ticket to the good life. Unless you like grinding and competition, and want a career which features both, I feel it's usually just the opposite. So it makes sense to "say no," as those in OP do.
Truly, kids aren't getting a "head-start" these days -- they're engaging in ever more complex and Byzantine make-work. And, emphatically, I do not believe it has any impact on their intellectual achievements later in life.
Have you ever looked at Ivy League university ads from 100 years ago? They're often about giving your son a well-rounded education in the liberal arts so that he's equipped to take over the family business.
So there's an idea. Instead of forcing your kids to grind, you could leave them stakes in a business. Either yours, or one you build together with them.
That's just one idea. There are many unconventional life paths that pay out better than the grind, and better equip your children. You just need to get a bit creative.
The numbers say push them to the max because the best opportunities are given, in the highest numbers, to the kids with the most boxes checked.
America is still where you can come from less than nothing and make it, but your parents don't determine that -- You do.
This sounds US-centric, looking from the outside it appears that you tried so hard to not use tests and marks to rate students that you made it all about projects/volunteering which mostly benefit kids with a lot money and time support from parents. It very much looks like performative kabuki for admissions officers where teenagers have lost interest in building something for the sake of it.
Anywhere else in the world, bar the US and the rest of the Commonwealth, it is all about grades and having exams with normal distributions as the great equalizer. For all the pros and cons at least anything else you do in your spare time as a teen you do it without any external agenda. A 16 year old shouldn't be worried about how something will look like on their CV.
See for example the International Baccalaureate programme and their point system normal distribution with thousands of kids from around the globe.
Isn’t this progress? The stress components, obviously not. But over time our teaching methods and tools progress, at least in respect of specific concepts.
The progress now means that this is now a default expectation at the high school level, which means more work for high-schoolers to just stay afloat.
I’m arguing this isn’t a given. It often is. But consider the pedagogical progress in just educational YouTube videos. Difficult concepts that took hours to understand can now be grasped in under an hour. (You still have to work at it.)
It's bad if the avg college admission officer expects every high-schooler to have an open source project.
Funny that people dont see the parallels between this, and housing. So much written about "boomers could easily afford a home on one salary, then they pulled up the ladder." No, not really, buying a house was always somewhat challenging, lots of families realized that two incomes would make affordability easier, that started to catch on, prices rose, soon two incomes became the bare minimum to afford a decent house. As competition rose for desirable cities/neighborhoods, not a surprise that now you need two well-above-median incomes to get into something decent.