EL PASO, TX— Every day is a new adventure for self-declared high-school superstar Ivy Lang, a junior at Midland High School. The sixteen-year-old declared on Monday that she is “happier and more fulfilled than ever” from neglecting her family, friends, and general mental stability in exchange for six AP classes and interminable standardized testing.

“As captain of the field hockey team, Secretary-General of Model UN, President of Debate Club, Treasurer of National Honor Society, Vice-President of National Art Honor Society, Historian of World Language Honor Society, test subject of National Science Honor Society, and undisputed Leader of the Free World, I do have a lot on my plate,” admitted the driven teen. “But it’s all worth it to see the smiling face of my college coach, whom my parents pay $500 a week to tell me that I’m not good enough to get into Dartmouth.”

While life may appear to be easygoing for these ambitious young minds, a darker story often lurks beneath the surface. “I haven’t seen my parents in months,” confessed Stanley “Stan” Ford, Lang’s best friend and chief competitor in AP Chemistry. “Aside from school and weekly therapy sessions, my contact with other human beings is quite minimal.” Ford then went on to describe his Vitamin D deficiency, which he acquired from hours spent cooped up in chemistry study sessions and away from the natural lighting of the outside world. “I try to study in complete darkness, like Ivy does. Hey, do you know what she got on the last chem test?”

For teens like Lang and Ford, college is more than a mere stepping-stone—it is an infallible litmus test for predicting the successes of the future and validating those of the past. “I don’t know what I would do if I got rejected from every [Top 20] school I’m applying to,” conceded Lang. “Go to a state school?” The teens laughed nervously, pondering the trappings of their hopeless idealism.