To play devil's advocate, is a high stress, pressured, test obsessed selective school, populated by entitled kids with pushy parents, "the right school" for the poor-but-capable-kid..... ;). Will they make friends there and be happy and still want to read for pleasure and be curious about the world outside school? (OK , to be fair you might not want them to go school in a very rough area with drugs and other crime, either)

Then it is wrong school. But the other issue is that you are strongly drawing here on the stereotypes - that this school will be test obsesed, kids in it will be bad entitled kids and you cant make friends with them.

Kids in real world selective schools do form relationships, are curious, interact and like the world outside. Some selective schools are like you describe ... but others are not and kids in them are happy.