One of the best quotes I’ve seen lately was in the proverbs thread:
These calls may be what friends and I call “calls of doom.” Those are calls where the kid releases her pent up anxiety about stuff out on the mom, and then after the call feels much better but we are left to stew and worry. Since it sounds like she’s close, could you go over on a weekend and take her and some friends to lunch and see how she’s doing? I think including friends helps to get a better picture of how she is interacting with her peers, etc. I also would talk to her about depression as a possible issue.
The middle of the first semester can be a tough time for many freshmen, in my opinion.
The excitement of the first few weeks is over, and the “instant friendships” that people seemed to make during that week may have vanished as people split up and followed their own interests and schedules. There hasn’t been time yet to make the lasting friendships that will replace them, and students may also be uncertain about how they’re doing academically.
So it can be a lonely and difficult period for many students. Unfortunately, though, many kids in this situation don’t realize that there are others like them.
This sounds like very, very common scenarios, being the person that is now the small fish in the big sea when they had been the big fish in a small sea is unsettling, plus she also is moving from an established social hierarchy she had in middle and high school, kids she went to school likely for years, to someplace where she is entirely a face in the crowd.
I agree with others, as a parent we can only be supportive and a sympathetic ear, we cant’ change anything. One of the things the D or any child has to recognize is that in a big school like that (I went to a big private university), what I found was that you end up finding a smaller village in the big city (and I apologize for the cliche, I don’t like them much, but seemed to fit). She is going to need to go out of her comfort zone to find new things, if the old things didn’t work. She also has to realize that the pool being so large, it is likely she won’t be the best. This is common with music students, when they hit music school/conservatory, they may be for the first time seeing kids who are well advanced of where they are (and even if you have experienced it, as my S did being in a very competitive pre college program, it can be daunting). I would tell her that if she made the dance team, it was for a reason, and that if she isn’t the best, that is great because it is a challenge to meet, much the same way that the amazingly accomplished kids in my S’s studio help drive him forward.
I also think others are right, that if she is keeping up with other kids she knew on facebook or whatnot, it likely looks like they are having the time of their life…without realizing their parents are probably hearing the same thing (I would tell her that, or tell her what other parents have said to you, either on here or IRL). Back when I went to college, when we used chisels on stone tablets and all that, you went away to school, and really only saw friends from high school when you went home for holidays and such, so by the time we saw each other, most of us had found our feet, and could complain about the really important things, how bad the cafeteria was, the teacher from hell who wrote equations with one hand and erased with another, the dating scene (never the lack thereof), etc, etc:)
You have to trust that if she was socially successful once, she will be again. My oldest went through this, spent most of his second semester holed up in his room. Being a typical boy, he internalized it all instead of venting to us. Counseling did help, in his case the summer after freshman year away from the drama.
Now, a first semester junior, he is back to his Van Wilder ways with mostly a new group of friends. Lucky for us, the younger ones avoid all this by being total nerds.
I remember having some low points as a transfer student in a new place. I initially made some nice friends but then the bottom dropped out a few weeks later. I floundered for a bit socially and then decided to start helping out at the campus YWCA & made a whole new group of friends that worked out much better for me. I didn’t share any of this info with my folks, so they never knew how rocky things were for me socially–sometimes too much sharing makes it tougher on the parents, I think.
Oh my gosh I used to do this to my mom with illness. I would call her acting like I was at death’s door (and at the time I thought I was LOL). She would call back a few hours later to check on me and my roommates would tell her I went to the football game, or basketball game or whatever. 
I tended to NEVER share with my folks except when things were going well. My dad was fully convinced I’d flunk out of law school because I only shared about fun and outings. I never told him that I had never studied so long and hard in my life–figured that was boring and why share the misery? My kids followed my cue and never shared the rough or bad, only the happy and good.
I get calls of doom when D2 is sure she is going to fail classes. “Will you still love me if I fail Special Relativity? And Differential Equations?” She didn’t fail either, and I am more used to these calls now. 
I reassure her that I will love her no matter what, and it seems to help. And she always pulls through.
You should be glad she confides in / dumps on you. Your job is to be the receptacle of her angst / feelings of inferiority / fears. Listen. Ask if there’s anything you can do. Tell her you have faith /confidence in her. Check in regularly. Send care packages (or funny cards with $$$ for a splurge). It’s not easy - and sophomore year might be just as dramatic given higher level classes, competition for internships, etc. (Just warning you!) All you can do is tell her you will support her in whatever she decides to do (change majors / transfer / drop a class, etc.) - Winter break is a good time to take a pulse on the situation. Thanksgiving will be stressful - finals looming! - but by winter break one semester will be under her belt. If she gets together with her HS friends, and they are being honest, I bet most will share similar “not quite what I expected” experiences. It ain’t easy - especially with daughters.
This thread is making me remember freshman year Thanksgiving break for my daughter - she got together with a big group of her HS friends and came back saying that she was the only one who had already found “her people” at college. All of these kids eventually settled in and are happy seniors at their colleges now.
It takes some people a while, maybe until Thanksgiving to settle in at college. I remember my S freshman year during his first set of midterms ask me “are these really the best years of my life because it isn’t feeling so great right now.” It kinda broke my heart at the time. BUT he found his footing academically, found his “people”, found activities he loved and had an absolutely amazing and life-altering (for all the right reasons) college experience.
So I’d say support and encouragement to keep moving forward/keep doing are the key things right now. Remind her that she has gone from the senior who knows the ropes to the freshman who is finding her place. Remind her that it is natural that people in clubs like dance will be better than she is now – doesn’t she expect to be better if she sticks with it for the next 4 years?
Concur with all the above. Your job is to be a good listener and try to determine if she is experiencing anything more than just the typical difficulties of first semester freshman year. Have you been to visit? Going to parents weekend helped me see that my son was doing better than his very short and unsatisfactory phone calls suggested.
My middle son came home a lot at the beginning of his freshman year at the not very far away State flagship. Once he found his people, he came home much less.
I have heard many stories of kids that were ready to fill out the transfer applications at this point in freshman year, but stuck it out and by the end of the year were very happy with their college. Of course, others transfer and find a much better fit.
Finding a non competitive activity might be a good idea, but I would not convey anything that stereotypes people. Of any kind.
While both of my daughters were lucky enough to make good friends early on and as they are now both post-college they are still friends with the majority of them, one of my older daughter’s closest friends today she met her second semester junior year of college after returning from semester abroad and although this friend was actually a year older she was a grade behind in school as she performed mandatory alternate service to the military in Israel at age 18 prior to attending school in the U. S. and one of my younger daughter’s friends now post-college is a girl she barely knew in college as they were involved in totally different areas of interest at school.
That might be the longest sentence ever posted on CC.
Op,
Your D states that she leaked in middle school because she was popular, a cheerleader, and big girl on campus. High school got worse, presumably because she is now in a bigger pond and others have zoomed ahead of her while she is maybe standing still so she feels like she was going backwards. Now in college, the pond has gotten bigger still and so it’s even gotten worse.
I guess what I would address is why does she feel like she needs to be popular, in a top sorority, a cheerleader to bolster her self image or self worth? I suspect that maybe her self image may be influenced highly by the movies? I guess that I would stress the importance of learning how to feel comfortable in her own skin and trying to shed some of the images that movies or tc or social media affect her self worth by defining popularity.
Longest sentence with least amount of punctuation!
My sentences tend to do that too , but back to the subject at hand 
I am hoping that before the year is over , my daughter finds SOMETHING she likes about her school