Oh yeah. This is a game in which people are competing for social status. Sure, you can buy a nice car and you can buy a nice house, but you can't buy your children's way into... actually, scratch that. It's just much harder.

But having smart kids is the crowning achievement for these parents. I feel terribly sorry for kids caught in the middle of all of it.

I went to Stanford, but my parents didn't give a damn about any of that. Get this -- they taught me to value knowledge and a good work ethic, and I got in because I was really good at standardized tests.

However, I don't think it's been a big benefit for me because I wasn't a top student there, and I got off the hyper-achievement train early on in my twenties. I probably would have been just as okay professionally if I had taken that full scholarship to Texas A&M that I got through my standardized test-taking ability.