<p>Years ago, I met a young Asian-American student who was thrilled to be at Harvard. I asked her why. I might have expected prestige, Ivy League, resources, blah blah blah. She said it was the diversity. She had been one of six Asian-American students in a school of 2000 in Indiana. No one had ever been unkind to her, uttered racist remarks, discriminated against her. She just was tired of being asked to represent all Asians in the various classes she took. Not only was she not of Japanese, Cambodian, Indonesian, South Asian, etc… origin, she was first and foremost herself and no one else. No one, she said, expected her Caucasian classmates to represent all white Americans. The presence of so many other Asian-Americans at Harvard allowed her to be herself, she said.
Not all Catholic universities have the same atmosphere. I believe Georgetown and BC come across as less religious than Notre Dame possibly because they draw their student bodies from a wider cross-section of the population. Whatever the case, I think the OP’s sister ought to give ND a chance. It is an excellent school, and going the CC route is by no means a guarantee that the sis will end up at Cal or UCLA. In fact, it looks less likely all the time.</p>