<p>Dang, I posted a long reply last night, but it somewhow didn’t get posted. I had to laugh when you said your D is top dog without any major effort. It sounds more and more like our D’s are alike. My D said she feels guilty sometimes shen her friends study two hours for a test and get a B and she studies a half hour and gets an A. She said, “I just get things easily.”
I’m not expecting D to be a finalist for the Elite. To get in the top 14, you would need almost everything to be perfect. My D’s teacher rec’s were kind of disappointing. Despite my wife and I both being teachers in the same school our D attends, our colleagues wrote the generic rec’s they write for kids trying to get into local colleges, which aren’t very difficult in which to get accepted. Maybe we should have told them our D was applying to some schools with very low admit rates and their rec’s would need to be more detailed, but what’s done is done.
I envy you that your D has made her decision and she is getting such a great package. She shouldn’t be disappointed at all. You/she are in a better position financially than 99% of others!</p>