Where I went to high school, not a lot of kids went on to college. Getting accepted into a Cal State was great; if you got into a UC, you were golden! Admission into a private university was cause for celebration. I remember thinking that expectations should be higher.

Today, the college admissions process has become insanely competitive, especially at elite high schools. Now we read stories about scholar-athletes with 4.4 GPAs (and volunteer experience that make them look like teenage Mother Theresas) getting rejected by a slew of Ivy League schools. Some kids are cracking under the pressure.

Witness 18-year-old Azia Kim. The Orange County girl graduated from Troy High School in 2006, which was named #21 in Newsweek's recent list of the country's best high schools.

Azia wanted to go to Stanford, but was apparently rejected. So she showed up on campus anyway and posed as a student:

The 18-year-old kept a low profile and was able to pull off the elaborate deception for almost an entire school year, slipping into her dorm room through an open window, relaxing in the dorm lounge and talking about tests she apparently never would take, students said.

"I had no idea," said freshman Jessica Wacker, 18, who lived in the same dormitory. "Everybody was so surprised. It's so strange that everybody in the dorm could have not know about somebody staying here. She just blended in, so you really couldn't tell."

Like most readers, my initial reaction was: WHY would she perpetuate such a charade?

Several students suggested it was because of intense pressure to gain admittance to one of the country's most elite universities.

"She was perpetuating a lie that she had been attending the university," Wacker said. "I think she had told her parents, and she perpetuated the lie so far that she actually had to come to the campus to stay here."

Freshman Alissa Haber, 19, whose softball teammate shared a room with Kim for the fall and winter quarters, said she sympathized with the impostor.

"When I was going through the application process, I was pretty nervous, too," Haber said. "I mean, not to the point where if I didn't get in I would have faked it, but I can understand that there's a lot of pressure from outside forces to get into a school like this."

Azia apparently blogged about her college experience, ruminating on finals and looking forward to summer.

Many parents are understandably upset that a young woman breached campus security so brazenly, and the Santa Clara District Attorney is considering whether or not to press charges.

My reaction is overwhelming sympathy. This girl clearly nurtured this dream for so long that she couldn't bear to let it go, or to disappoint those around her. My heart breaks when I think of how desperate and lost she must have felt roaming the campus, nursing this terrible, shameful secret, wanting so badly to belong there.

Azia's pastor was stunned by the revelation:

"What I know is she got accepted at Stanford and went to Stanford," said Bert Yun, adding that he was completely unaware she wasn't a student there. "I've never heard these stories."

He said Kim was a motivated and diligent teenager, and any deception would be "out of character."

"Why would she do that?" he asked. "She's a very good person."

Yun last heard from Kim by e-mail about five or six months ago.

"When I heard from her," he recalled, "she said she was having a great time at Stanford."

I hope she gets the counseling she so clearly needs, and I hope that parents and educators everywhere reevaluate this crushing pressure we place on young people. It's too much, too soon.