Book Summary and Reviews of The Overachievers by Alexandra Robbins

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Cathryn Conroy

This Book Is Deeply Disturbing…and That Is Exactly Why You Should Read It
This book is deeply disturbing. And that is exactly why you should read it.

Written by Alexandra Robbins, the book follows four juniors, three seniors and one graduate of Walt Whitman High School in tony Bethesda, Maryland for a little more than a year during 2004-2005. As the title would indicate, these teenagers have it all and do it all. They are highly intelligent and deeply motivated. They not only excel at their schoolwork—be it AP English or AP physics—but also excel at athletics, art, and music. They participate in a dizzyingly high number of extracurricular activities. The only thing they don't do is sleep.

This is what it feels like to be an overachiever:
• Getting a B is like getting an F.
• Cheating is perfectly OK if it means getting the A.
• Sabotaging other students' work is a legitimate way to compete.
• It's perfectly OK to take unprescribed ADD drugs for better focus.
• If you're going to play a sport, you absolutely must be a superstar. Or don't play.

While many of the students profiled in the book are highly self-motivated, some of them are pushed—relentlessly and (in one case) cruelly—by their parents. The students and parents truly believe that if the kids don't go to an Ivy League university or an Ivy-wannabe, all the effort, time and lack of sleep in high school was worthless. It's Harvard-Yale-Princeton or nothing. And that is a lot of pressure!

This book is nonfiction, but Robbins is so talented that it reads more like a novel. It was hard to put down because I wanted to know what happened next to Julie, Taylor, Sam, C.J., Ryland and the rest of the crowd.

I have only one quibble with this extraordinary book: Except for one student, those who are profiled all come from wealthy families. The cost of college is not a concern. So while the parents and students stress over an A- or a "low" SAT score of 1410 (out of 1600), at no point is there any discussion—much less worry or stress—about the outrageously high cost of these top-tier colleges to which they all aspire. There are overachievers at every high school in this country, but it is truly rare when parents can easily write checks to cover $65,000 a year. Most overachievers also have to lose what precious sleep they do get wondering how they will pay for it all.