bluemagic,
It's interesting because my DD is also 15, and in a similar type of high achieving public high school. Granted, she is only starting her sophomore year, but in a school with 1800 students, DD is near the top (possibly at the top) of her grade . This was quite frankly a pleasant surprise for us.
Her friends include most of the top performers. They are busy, but I wouldn't call them stressed. I know several of the kids' families share our philosophy that if the child puts forth the effort, they will do fine when it comes to college admissions, even though no specific college is a guaranteed admit. We are also confident they will do fine in the college they are admitted too. Our friends with children in college uniformly report that college is easier than our high school, regardless of whether the child is attending Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon, etc.
Where I see the stress is in the kids that are not in the top 5%, and where the parents are pressuring the kids to perform at a level that they cannot. These parents force the kids to take the honors classes when they should not, and the emphasis is on grades, not effort. These are the girls that I see suffering from eating disorders, or worse.
