As the college application process starts to invade the consciousness of Parker juniors, competitiveness grows in the community.

“I think students, as they move on in the grades, feel an increasing sense of ‘How am I going to compete against other students at other schools trying to get into colleges?’” Principal Dan Frank said, “and that’s where Parker’s sort of culture of Model Home runs into the outside world.”

Type A and B are two of the ways psychologists have categorized people since the 1950s, when cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman were looking into how personality type affects heart disease. Type A people are said to be competitive, ambitious, and aggressive, whereas type B people are described as more laid-back and relaxed.

Psychologists have asserted that there is no intrinsically good or bad personality type. Type A people are more reliable, productive, and efficient, but they tend to be more stressed and worried–and competitive to a fault. Type B people are more easygoing, rarely very stressed about their responsibilities, though they may also have trouble getting things done on time and can be frustrating to work with.

According to the Parker website, “Our culture of trust and authenticity nurtures an abiding sense of purpose and joy that drives our work toward insight, understanding and accomplishment.” Parker’s ethos, at least in theory, is Type B.

The mission of the school states that learning is supposed to be a fun, self-guided experience. Students are supposed to be “authentic” and to learn for the sake of learning, not just for grades.

To this extent, the school does not offer advanced placement (AP) classes or class rankings. “Class rankings create a very narrow definition of what you mean by the number one student, and it runs against the value that everybody does have a value,” Frank said. “I think that not having class ranking is a good example of a statement that there are certain kinds of competition that we do not think are healthy to growth and learning in the community.”  

Frank explained further.  “If one defines competition as people, in some agressive way, trying to improve their own situation in relation to another in a noncooperative way, I’d say we do not have that kind of culture,” he said. “I think that that’s a healthy thing.”

Upper School English teacher Mike Mahany finds that students are competitive in how they pursue good grades. “Parker, I think, doesn’t want to think of itself as competitive, but there is an underlying competitiveness,” Mahany said. “There is a real grade consciousness. People get really upset about A minuses and B pluses.”

For some Parker students, the pressure of academics and extracurriculars has created a competitive culture. One area where this Type A persuasion shows itself is in the college process. “Parker is Type A,” senior Nina Blake said. “The pressure to go to elite college starts really early here and causes people to view each other as competitors as opposed to peers.”

College pressure is not the goal of the College Counseling office at Parker by any means. “We wish we could eliminate the stress involved with this process, and the focus that too many people put on grades, and scores, and test prep,” Head of College Counseling Susan Weingartner said. “However, we only have so much control. As much as we try, we cannot prevent some parents from putting pressure on their kids or students putting pressure on themselves, or students feeling pressure from everywhere, and some feeling competitive instead of collaborative.”

Meetings with college counseling that start in sophomore year, posters of prestigious universities that Parker students have attended dotting the walls of the school, and summertime emails about college programs all work to bring college into the consciousness. “We talk about college all the time,” junior Grace Philip said. “They try to make it less stressful with meetings and handouts, but we’re totally forced to think about college basically every day.”

The competitive culture, according to  junior Edward Polsky, is magnified by the small grade size. “At Parker everybody knows everybody,” Polsky said. “Because there are so few people, it’s easy to be in each other’s business.” This includes knowing everybody’s latest “Meeting of the Minds” grade, physics lab report mark, and ACT score.

It is not so easy to stay relaxed about grades and test scores when those around you know what you are getting in a class. “I think grade size makes competition at the school so much worse,” junior Olivia Levine said, “because we’re constantly comparing ourselves.”

Students are pushed into this competitive atmosphere, in which they are vying for spots on the “who’s going to be successful” ladder. It creates judgement and comparison between students that inevitably leads to competition.

Personality types can be a double-edged sword, and of course, just because some at Parker might feel the school is Type A, that’s not necessarily a bad thing on balance, and of course not everyone in the school is competitive. “I think that the dominant culture is Type A,” junior Jai Choudhary said, “but depending on who you’re with, you can find both kinds of people.”