"I feel it is the parents job to motivate and nudge their children if required to excel."
Make sure you encourage and love your kid while nudging. My son has six close friends. Two of them are really struggling as juniors in high school with what they want to do, grades, etc. My son and another of the boys seem very settled and confident in themselves. Other two are kind of in between.
Here's what I notice — the difference seems to correlate with how their parents talk to and about them. The two who are struggling have parents who say "I can't get Johnny up in the morning. " "Johnny's too small to play at a D1 level." "Carl just has no ambition."
The kids who are doing okay have parents who say "Gosh, I love talking to my kid. He has goofy ideas sometimes, but I love hearing them. " or "It's a struggle to make those 6 a.m. workouts, but I'm so proud that he got himself up for this morning's workout." or "Yea, he doesn't know exactly what he wants to do , but here's what he's working on."
In other words, the parents who talk positively about their kids have kids who feel positively about themselves. The ones who mostly see the negatives in their kids have kids who don't feel good about themselves.
Our job as parents has to be encouraging kids to feel good about where they are heading, whether it's Vanderbilt or the local community college. Or trade school.