For years, students especially from urban areas complained that they were reduced to nothing more than grades, as one bad paper could define years of hard work. A handful of extra marks separated those labelled ‘brilliant’ from everyone else. Critics argued the system was too narrow. Surely a student was more than a report card. Our educational institutions adopted a ‘new’ philosophy to ‘encourage’ students to be a volunteer, conduct research, participate in Olympiads, run social initiatives, and build leadership profiles.
Admission officers began looking beyond board marks. It was a welcome change. A doctor should know how to communicate with patients, not merely memorize textbooks. An engineer should lead a team. A policymaker must understand community service. The philosophy was never the problem. The race that followed was. Today, exceptional grades are merely the cover charge. Entry thresholds across competitive university tracks routinely demand upwards of 90% in intermediate or straight A*s in A-Levels just to clear initial screening.
To stand out, teenagers must now stack hospital internships, publish research, attend conferences, win national competitions, and run non-profits—all while prepping for finals. At this rate, the average 17-year-old’s CV reads less like a high school senior and more like a retired UN consultant with two mortgages. What was meant to be ‘holistic development’ has hardened into a relentless checklist. The toll is real: data published in the Journal of Pakistan Medical Association shows that over 68% of urban high school pre-medical students experience severe anxiety, driven by the dual burden of top grades and profile-stacking.
Regionally, British Council research reveals that three in four South Asian applicants find extracurricular profile building as stressful as board exams. Students no longer ask, “What interests me?” They ask, “What will look good on my application?” Research is the clearest casualty. Meaningful research teaches critical thinking. Today, A-Level students search for journal publications before understanding basic methodology. This desperation has fueled a booming commercial industry of predatory ‘pay-to-publish’ journals and paid mentorship agencies catering to high schoolers needing a CV line.
Volunteering has suffered a similar fate: community service is increasingly measured in certificates and social media photos rather than genuine empathy. The problem isn’t the activities, but research matters. Leadership matters, and service matters. The problem is converting every human experience into a competitive flex. Worse, this competition is fundamentally rigged. Data from the Academy of Educational Planning and Management reveals that fewer than five percent of government high schools offer structured career counseling or extracurricular facilities.
In contrast, over 80% of elite private institutions in Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad provide dedicated college counselors, research mentors, and corporate networks. In some cases, privilege is rarely just liquid wealth. It is access to mentors, laboratories, hospital wards, and ‘recommendation’ letters. In everyday language, some people call it ‘recommendation’. It isn’t always blatant bribery; more often, it is a family friend, a relative’s batch-mate, or an alumnus opening a door. A single phone call from a well-connected relative can manufacture a summer clinical rotation faster than any student can write a personal statement.
A study by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics confirms that over 60% of internships in urban centers are secured through informal social networks. When admission committees compare an elite private school student with an applicant from a modest background, they routinely mistake opportunity for achievement. The student who appears more accomplished isn’t necessarily more talented; they simply started closer to the finish line. We do not need to abandon holistic admissions and return to the soul-crushing rote-learning of the past. Exam scores cannot measure compassion, resilience, or integrity. But holistic evaluation must become genuinely contextual.
Local universities and testing bodies must install structural guardrails: First, restricting applications to three or five key experiences kills checklist-stacking and rewards true commitment over vanity. Second, admissions portals must explicitly measure achievements against constraints, evaluating family obligations, working hours, and school resource levels. Third, committees should actively ignore unverified, self-funded journal lines, relying instead on critical thinking demonstrated through essays and raw interviews. Not every aspiring doctor needs a research paper before medical school. Not every applicant needs three internships. Not every summer holiday needs to end up on digital professional page.
Pakistan does not need teenagers with the longest resumes; it needs citizens with curiosity, integrity, and resilience. If we don’t fix this, we will soon reach a point where a teenager can solve world hunger, launch a satellite, and host a podcast on macroeconomic policy—and still get rejected because their classmate’s uncle got them a certificate in underwater basket weaving. If holistic admissions simply become another playground for privilege and networking, we haven’t escaped the ‘tyranny’ of grades. We’ve just given ‘recommendation’ a sharper outfit and a prettier portable document format.
