Preparing for college is a pressure that burdens students as early as seventh grade and parents in Dartmouth are taking a stand.

The Healthy Dartmouth parent series continued on Monday evening with a discussion on student anxiety. Parents and students gathered with members of the community to tackle issues of overscheduling and compulsive overachievement in school.

Parents shared their overlapping concerns with wanting their students to do well in high school to alleviate the financial burden of college but not wanting them to burn out from the stress of balancing school, extracurriculars and free time.

One father shared the story of his daughter who “coped with stress differently” by developing an eating disorder. Pressure from achieving in her classes and sustaining injuries from athletics led her to pull out of college within the first month.

He now warns other parents against overburdening their children. However, he often gets pushback. “I’ll tell them ‘watch out’ and they say ‘no, not us.’”

One mother talked about her daughter who is striving for acceptance into Ivy League schools like Harvard. She constantly reminds her daughter to take time to decompress.

“She doesn’t have to get into the schools because of me,” she said.

This pressure to succeed often starts well before high school, and by the time they become freshmen, they look like they’re walking a “death march” into school, said one parent.

Director of Curriculum Tracy Oliveira’s son was stricken with a case of appendicitis. While at the hospital, her son was nearly frantic. Oliveira thought he was just worried about the surgery until he said, “I have MCAS tomorrow.”

Additionally, students are made to feel that they are only succeeding if they’re in the school’s top tier of excellence – achieving high grades in advanced classes while juggling varsity sports.

For many students, however, success takes the form of getting Bs and excelling in the arts or unconventional sports.

One parent’s advice to students was, “If you’re too busy, you’re doing too much.”