<p>In my opinion, the only way your daughter is going to get into Stanford is if her counselors and her teachers writing the recommendations stress strongly the challenges she has had being economically challenged and with the hardships of the death of her father and her having to take on a parent role in the household. You should write a letter to those writing her references, a different letter to each person, detailing her hardships that those writing her references can use. THere should be no holdback on this and be a real tear jerker. Your daughter should hardly mention the hardship, just barely touch on it, if at all. It’s better than others blow that horn, not her. Her hook is doing so incredibly well academically even with all of this happening in her life. </p>
<p>Really her test scores are not in the ball park and without that situation brought to the forefront, I don’t see how she would be accepted.</p>