A lot of these people spend hours a week studying for the SATs and courses with the dream and imagination of getting into an Ivy League. You could say it's a misplaced effort, that these kids should lower expectations, and that these people should be happy with the opportunities they have, and there's merit.
But in the moment, it's a huge blow to feel like hard work just won't pay off, and it certainly caused depression among a few people I knew. This can be mitigated by good mentorship and parenting, but not all people end up with good mentors, and parents who didn't experience the process might not understand it either.
Unfortunately that point it’s a pain in the ass to go back.
Getting something out of College is a lot of what you put into it. At Umass we had students who didn't go to class and did rather poorly. Many left. We had some who worked really hard and went on to Ivy league grad schools. Northeastern had the Coop program which was really useful for friends that went there undergrad to get work experience. Some of college is luck (who you end up meeting, if classes give you background on work. My CS Operating Systems class was invaluable for me in my first post grad school job)
The college rejections are weird, yes, but I don’t feel bad for him