I agree with puffin and Eco on this one. Depending on the school environment, kids can hear a lot of strange things coming from their peers (or indirectly from their peers' parents.) We have even heard these kinds of comments, more often than you would think, from teachers and school counselors.
My kids both participate in an extracurricular academic team- at the middle school level (high school seems better for some reason) about half the kids are there because they love the material, the comradarie of the group, the thrill of the challenge, etc. The other half are there because they believe it will look good to colleges (middle school level!) or their parents have insisted they participate, and expect them to excel there. In reality, I suspect most kids have a mixed bag of motivations, with some closer to one end or the other. It's hard to force kids to do activities like this if they are truly not interested.
We discuss it frequently with our kids, mainly to help them understand the behaviors and attitudes of some of their friends. There can be tremendous parental pressure on some kids, and I find that the kids living with this type of expectation often parrot the lines about college application padding, even in middle school. In truth, some are punished or diminished for less than stellar outcomes, whether in grades or extracurricular activities. (Just yesterday DS mentioned that a friend who earned a spot in a county-wide music ensemble was worried that her parents would blame her for not earning a higher chair level- ugh.) Modern society can be pretty messed up.
