For what it is worth, your plan looks very similar to what many kids at our feederish HS end up doing with the support of our very experience college counselors.
A few specific notes. I completely agree you are not abandoning MIT, she is just going to apply there RD, and that is really not something I would be concerned about. And if she happened to get into Yale SCEA (and note a decent number of people get deferred but then accepted RD), the nice thing about that is she can then just shut down anything she would not plausibly prefer, but keep going with anything she might, including MIT.
The other thing, which you are already thinking about, is ED 2. That can get tricky. Like, what if she is deferred by Yale and not rejected? What about MIT? Should she do ED 2 and possibly give up those options?
Iāll just note that when my S24 was deferred by Yale, he thought about ED 2 at WUSTL, then decided not to. Long story short, he was rejected RD by Yale, got into WUSTL RD, and now he is off to WUSTL.
Was that a guaranteed result? Of course not. But I do personally think there is too much pressure on kids to ED somewhere. OK if makes sense, but if not, just make sure you have good alternatives.
Like, my S24 also got into LACs like Carleton, Haverford, and Vassar. He got an offer from St Andrews. He got the Monroe Scholarship at William & Mary. He got into Wake Forest, Rochester with a bit of merit, and Pitt with (eventually) a bit of merit.
So if his āgambleā not to ED 2 WUSTL had not worked out, he would have been fine!
Anyway, I just thought this situation sounded so broadly familiar I would lay out those thoughts. Long story short, your plan looks excellent to me.
