Problem is, the world is an economic slugfest today unlike it was at least when I grew up. When my High School class graduated a long time ago, most of us were competing for jobs with people in our own small town. At most, we were competing with the surrounding counties. There was university for A students, community college and/or middle class office work for B students, normal working class jobs for C students, and tougher lower-paying jobs for D students. As for university, we were competing for entrance with mostly other people in our state.

Today's kids are competing with the entire world, and the middle class is disappearing. So it's much higher stakes. And it's bimodal: You're either one of the few winners and get to live a comfortable life with a professional job, or you're off to WalMart or an Amazon warehouse, or Prison. The "kind of comfortable middle class life" is shrinking quickly. So it's not enough to just get straight A's. You need extra credit, get a 5.0 GPA, take all the "right" AP classes, have the "right" extracurriculars, and the "right" community service and so on. Otherwise you risk landing on the bad side of the career bimodal distribution.