[downerending]

More "during" than "after". Not sure if mine counts as "top", but most would say it's easily in the top 25 for my discipline. It was plenty hard for me, though, and in hindsight, I think it would have been better to be the brilliant kid in a lower-ranked school than an also-ran in a higher-ranked school (relative to the range of schools that would admit me).

That's just a guess, but I've seen a lot of others suffer from shooting too high.