The important parts of life (like interviews) do.
Interviews shouldn't be "exam conditions" either. See the ten thousand different articles that regularly show up here about why not to do the "invert a binary tree on a whiteboard" style of interview.
There are much better ways to figure out people's skills. And much better things to be using in-person interview time on.
The reality is life is full of time boxed challenges.
All of life! An exam is a time boxed challenge. Sometimes it's open notes, sometimes it's not. I've had exams where I have to write an essay, and I've had exams where I've had to solve math problems. All things I've had to do in high pressure situations in my job.
Solving problems with no help and a clock ticking happens a million times per day.
We even assign grades in life, like "meets expectations" and "does not meet expectations".
Even still, you missed the point of my comment. You keep focusing on how interviews should be done, not how they're conducted in reality.
Sure, in school there is no real consequence. That's why it's important. School exams are orders of magnitude easier than the real world.
> "thrives under pressure" is not a universal quality everyone is expected to have or use
School isn't intended to imbue everyone with universal qualities. Some people will excel and some wont. The ones that excel will go on to work in situations where you must thrive under pressure.
> It's a useful skill, and it's more useful to have than to not have, but the same can be said of a thousand skills
This is a different discussions then.
Thriving and excelling are not that far apart :).
Thrive: grow or develop well Excel: be exceptionally good at or proficient in an activity
> It is not the single most important skill
Nobody said it was!
> everyone must be filtered on
It's a data point. Exam scores don't matter when you apply for a job, or do anything else in life.
… which most people come out of 17+ years of school having done very little of, with basically a phobia of it, and being awful at it.
They are probably something like oral exams that a few universities use heavily, or the teaching practices of many elite prep schools.
[edit] oh and interviews in most industries aren’t like that. Tech is especially grueling in the interview phase.