This is brilliant. It sums up my feelings about education so succinctly. I'm stealing this.
Not necessarily true. I never worked hard at anything in high school, and was accepted by several ivy league colleges. My experience was not unusual. I did not work all that hard in college, but was accepted at Stanford for grad school.
(I averaged maybe 30-40hrs a week on schoolwork in college, leaving plenty of time for other activities.)
There were some who did work their asses off, but they were in the minority and I felt rather sorry for them. Either they were working inefficiently, or just weren't cut out for that career path. It'd be like me trying to be a pro athlete. I could work my ass off, and never get anywhere, as I have worse than no aptitude for it.
Some also did no perceptible work and got straight As. I was a bit envious of them :-) they were amazing people.
At each stage, the purpose is the same - to prove that you are more deserving than your peers of a seat in the next stage, because each stage has fewer seats than the last.
If you value your present well-being over advancement (and therefore future well-being), don't put yourself in a competitive educational environment with the goal of "winning" (i.e. high GPA). If you have certain career tracks in mind, sleep deprivation, poor mental health, and low quality of life in the short and medium terms are table stakes.
I enjoyed my time at such a place once I had a good relationship with a tech company (now my employer) and no grad school ambitions. My friends headed for the sciences could not have optimized for their present happiness without giving up their dreams.