In high school I was not particularly athletic, but I was able to be on the Varsity cross country team thanks largely to the fact that our team (in the TAPPS 3A division) wasn’t that good. This year’s Top 10 cutoff for TAPPS 3A was an 18:30; for UIL 6A it was 15:20 (no one in TAPPS, across any division, ran that fast). But I benefitted enormously from being in TAPPS 3A vs. UIL 6A - there’s only so much coaching attention and effort able to go around (and it’s going toward the best performers), and my ability to motivate myself is higher when I know that a goal (placing top 10 at state, being the fastest runner on the team, etc.) is achievable vs. delusional. Cross country is largely an individual sport, your performance is solely a function of your effort, your training, your genetics; even without proper coaching you can still get better.
Parents want to send their children to “good schools” for high school (more broadly, for K-12) to help their kids thrive, which usually boils down to securing a slot at a “good college”. Houston has a handful of high schools that are high-prestige (St. John’s, Kinkaid, etc.); the surrounding public schools (esp. those in Sugarland and Katy) are similarly known for being “good schools”. In the Bay Area the public schools in South Bay are all considered academically strong. And yet, these schools are pressure cookers; when getting a ~1200 on the SAT (~84th percentile) surrounded by folks who are, on average, getting 1400s (~97th percentile), your experience is primarily one of falling behind or asking “dumb questions” in class. There’s only so much teaching attention and effort able to go around (and it’s going toward the best performers), and your ability to motivate yourself is lower when a goal (getting into college X, earning some scholarship, etc.) is delusional vs. achievable. Of course teacher quality matters for how much you learn, but it’s easier than ever to teach yourself (YouTube and Khan Academy exist), and colleges look at class rank for admissions.
A “good college”, as defined by Asian parents trying to flex on other Asian parents, is largely determined by overall university prestige; everyone knows that Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, etc. are elite institutions. But if you double-click into what programs are top ranked (caveat that rankings are flawed), you probably wouldn’t expect to see e.g., Georgia Tech, Michigan, and UIUC ahead of Princeton and Harvard for engineering, or USC, Virginia, and UNC near the top for business.
Some instances of special treatment that I’ve personally experienced from being a bigger fish: (1) moving up a year in high school math courses (→ college math courses were substantially easier since it was my second crack at them), (2) sitting for AP exams without having to take the classes (→ more AP credits in college → less time spent during undergraduate on weed-out, low-value courses), (3) better teacher relationships (e.g., in my Algorithms class I effectively could have the professor re-explain a topic just by looking at him a certain way), (4) additional scholarships, (5) easier access to joining certain clubs (which is where a lot of the real learning happens for e.g., finance), (6) additional events for honors students (dinners with professors, dinners with companies, etc.), and (7) easier access to recruiting events (→ at least partially how I ended up at BCG). I’m sure there’s more.
Intentionally selecting a smaller pond is not conductive to greatness. Being an Olympian requires pushing yourself 24/7/365 (not that I would know); being “one of the greats” requires dealing with the J. K. Simmons of the world. But I’d wager that most people would be happier not trying to go to Harvard and instead being great within a smaller pond.
A minor point, but I think the “small pond” or “little pond” phrasing isn’t ideal; it feels a bit denigrating.
Additional reading: Conley and Önder on PhD research productivity, Wikipedia