Even if it were still “soul-crushing”, we would have supported our daughter’s decision to attend. BTW, D tells me that about 1/3 of her house consists of “ghosts” - kids you just don’t see. So it’s quite possible that the average student is better adjusted simply because the student body is significantly larger and more diverse, and that the crushed souls are still tucked away in their rooms sweating over a particularly challenging course load. At one point these characters took up a good chunk of the undergraduate student body - now it’s more like a third.