What actually goes wrong
Very few students end up somewhere unsuitable because they weighed the options and chose badly. They end up there because of something they did not know in time.
They dropped a subject in Class 11 that the course they later wanted required. They found out in March that the entrance exam needed a year of preparation. They discovered a road that would have suited them perfectly two years after the door closed. They learned what a course cost the week the fee was due.
None of that is a failure of intelligence or effort. It is a failure of information, arriving late.
The door that closes at the end of Class 10
Here is the clearest example, and it happens every year in Karnataka.
A student entering PUC Science chooses a combination. PCMB carries Biology, which qualifies you for NEET — the single entrance for medicine, dentistry, AYUSH, veterinary science and B.Sc Nursing. PCMC carries Computer Science instead, which is stronger preparation for engineering and computing but means you cannot sit NEET at all.
That choice is usually made in a hurry, days after the results, by a family who has not been told what it decides. Two years later the student who wanted medicine discovers the door was shut before they knew it existed.
Knowing this in Class 8 costs you nothing. Not knowing it can cost two years.
The menu problem
Ask around your family and count the careers anyone can name. It will usually be four or five, and they will be the same four or five in most households.
That is not ignorance. Nobody ever showed them the rest. But it means a student is effectively choosing from a shortlist drawn up by people who had no way of knowing what else existed.
There are roughly fifty distinct courses you can enter directly from Class 10 in Karnataka, leading to more than nine hundred different jobs. A student who has read all fifty once has an advantage that no amount of coaching replaces.
Awareness is not pressure
A reasonable objection: is it not cruel to make a thirteen-year-old think about careers?
It would be, if we were asking them to decide. We are not. Awareness and decision are different things, and confusing them is what makes the subject stressful.
A student who has read about fifty roads in Class 8 and still has no idea what they want is in an excellent position. They have two years for something to settle, and when the moment comes they will be choosing rather than guessing. The pressure comes from deciding in a week, not from knowing early.