It’s that time of year again. Spring pollen and college rejection letters are making lots of folks around here feel miserable.

“Gone to find God’s greater purpose” was what one high school senior Tweeted when he got rejected from Princeton. Since when did being denied admission to the Ivy League become fodder for an existential crisis?

Gaining entrance to one of the top-ranked, elite institutions is like winning a place on the Olympic team. They’re both extremely long shots, even with the most single-minded dedication and drive. And here in the DC metro area, which lays claim to the most highly educated population in the country, it’s sometimes hard to know who has more at stake, the teens or their parents. Many mothers and fathers who’ve made it to the top of their own careers treat parenting as one more arena where besting the competition means success. The gold medal is a decal from Ivy U. on the rear window of the Prius.

Yes, the university admissions process has gotten wildly out of hand. I’ve seen up close the damage caused by intense parental expectations—college dropouts who had great promise but couldn’t handle the pressure, high school valedictorians who swallowed bottles of Tylenol rather than face telling their parents about failing grades, former premeds who cut off all contact with their families because the weight of unfulfilled expectations were too much for them to bear. True, most young adults don’t buckle under the strain in quite such dramatic ways. But far too many have trouble maintaining their emotional equanimity and motivation after they leave home. College retention rates (only about 55% of students entering four-year undergraduate programs actually stay in school and earn their degrees in four years) testify to this disturbing trend.

A college counselor once shared with me his advice for making a student an attractive candidate for a selective university:  “Be pointy.”  He tells his clients to develop a talent that makes them stick out and then build the ever-important college resume around it.  Having too many varied interests can seem dilettantish, which the consultant would say isn’t a sound marketing strategy in today’s hyper-competitive climate.

As a result, kids can’t just be kids these days. Those who show athletic promise are playing on travel teams before they’re out of elementary school. Their musical counterparts are competing for coveted seats in youth orchestras. Even the class clowns are refining their talents in summer theater camps with an eye on creating a compelling college admissions package.

In response to the push for teenagers to brand themselves as specialists, middle and high schools have created “signature” programs in the humanities, arts, science, and technology. While concentrating on one area of study may appeal to the highly directed student, pressures to choose a career path by the end of fifth or, at the latest, eighth grade may discourage the youngster with less defined goals from sampling a broad range of electives. I’ve known many kids who’ve enrolled in specialty programs not because they have a clear direction, but because they’re afraid if they don’t sign up, they’ll appear unfocused, unmotivated, or just plain uninteresting when they apply to college. And when they finally get there, they worry about their lack of passion in their chosen area of concentration.

It’s no wonder. Pursuing the carrot at the end of the stick is an example of “extrinsic motivation”—doing something for a tangible reward rather than for the pure pleasure of just doing it.   Research has shown that this type of incentive isn’t as lasting as the internal, or “intrinsic,” kind. If you take away an extrinsic payoff propelling a desired behavior, the urge to continue working at it often dissipates.

Too often, kids who are engaging in activities primarily to amass accolades for the college resume develop a “What’s in it for me?” attitude at the expense of true intellectual curiosity.  One young acquaintance of mine, a highly gifted student who devoted a senior-year biology internship to a biomedical research project that won him a prestigious award in a national science competition, has no plans to continue his scientific pursuits at the Ivy League school he’ll be attending next year.  He doesn’t even take particular pride in his accomplishment, dismissing it as something he did just because “ it looked good for college.”

So pushing children to specialize at ever earlier ages can erode self-direction and lead to burnout.  About seventy-five percent of college students experience uncertainty about their occupational goals at some point during their undergraduate education. Nearly half switch majors at least once.  Shouldn’t we be encouraging adolescents to explore a variety of interests—to dabble, even—during high school, when their brains are still developing and their personalities still forming?

We’re asking too much of our kids. Few of us, even if we’re successful, ever achieve true celebrity status. Yet we expect the high school equivalent of superstardom from our progeny. It’s time to step back and get some perspective on the process of raising a competent adult. College admission is only a first step on the way to maturity and a fulfilling life, not the end of the road. And, hard as it may be to believe for all the high school seniors (and their parents) whose hopes have been dashed this month, a rejection from Harvard or Penn isn’t the end of the world, either.