Worried about the intense pressures on students to succeed and the skyrocketing stress of the college and private school admissions processes, New York Times bestselling investigative journalist Alexandra Robbins returned to her high school during the year of her ten-year reunion. For more than a year, she followed nine students who were bright, funny, talented, and lovable – and who struggled over whether the way some circles labeled them actually reflected their identity. A true story about life, love, friendship, family, illness and rage, drugs and depression, this is a book that will make you laugh, cry, sigh, and clench your fists in anger. Come enter the halls of Walt Whitman High School and meet . . . THE OVERACHIEVERS.

The New York Times Book Review said: "I couldn't get enough of it. 'The Overachievers' is part soap opera, part social treatise... I was so hooked on their stories that I wanted to vote for my favorite contestant at the end of every chapter... It reads like very good ... fiction, thanks to its winning cast, its surprising plot twists and its pushy parents, including one truly disturbed mother...

Robbins is also a good writer, and she must be a good listener, because she more than delivers on the promise of 'secret lives' in the subtitle... At the end of the book, Robbins offers sensible suggestions for reform... Robbins gets the big picture right."