I also go to a low ranking (catholic) school, and yeah I can agree with that. I barely put any effort in year 7-10 maths and I’m pretty sure I was top 10 at the end out of 200 even though I completely bombed yearlies and got like 70%… nobody really tried, even in the top maths class there were dropkicks who failed. People seem to have picked up their game for senior years, but so have I so I guess that kinda helped me avoid the unrealistic expectations.
The roughest situation seems to be people with parents who are used to seeing their kids get straight As and then all of a sudden they can’t effortlessly get straight As and their parents get super mad about it, having all that pressure and parental expectations sounds really tough.