[AlisdairSH]

No, but excelling in high-school extra-curricular activities does. And the perception is you don't excel at extra-curricular activities unless you start young.

In my neighborhood, kids started working with professional strength coaches in middle-school in an effort to make varsity football or basketball. Excessive instruction in music was common. 2-3 sports a season on top of volunteer work or part-time jobs.

It's all in an effort to get a leg up at college admissions time. And it's absolutely insane.

[jlgreco]

I don't think volunteer work and part-time jobs really factor into the equation with the age group that I am picturing, though with teenagers they are important of course (Particularly I think finding a shitty part-time job that lets you goof off with your peers, then get yelled at by a boss (who honestly doesn't really expect better) is relatively important)

Starting them off in a sport or two seems fine, that's how I grew up anyway, but at least in my case there wasn't an excessively strong drive to excel there. I certainly wasn't going for a sports scholarship, so keeping fit and just being able to write "Sports, k-12" on my college application was good enough. One or two kids had really driving parents and I think the rest of us always felt bad for those kids, but it wasn't the norm.