<p>< The OP's daughter is interested in UC's -- the top ones will expect a rigorous senior year -- they are more merit-based and definitely not the "crap shoot" that Harvard, Yale, Princeton seem to be ></p>
<p>Point taken. However, admission to the UCs sounds very subjective to me. If extracurriculars, recommendations, essays, and other subjective criteria are important, admissions will be subjective and unpredictable.</p>
<p>I still stand by my position - the OP's daugther should stick to her guns. The OP's daughter makes my old high school self look like Ferris Bueller, Zack Morris, Jeff Spiccoli, or Bill and Ted in comparison despite the fact that I had been known as the academically obsessed one back in the day. I don't see how the Academic Performance Cult track can be sustainable given the health problems already mentioned.</p>
<p>If the OP's daughter takes this new track and gets rejection letters from the top UCs, she won't regret her change. But if she continues with the Academic Performance Cult track, (by some miracle) somehow manges to survive it, and gets rejected from the top UCs anyway, she'll regret it and wonder what might have been.</p>
<p>Looking back at my life, my regrets tend to be about times when I just went through the motions and didn't really stand for anything. I can't think of any regrets I have that sound like, "I should have studied harder" (because I know that if I could go back, I wouldn't have the capacity to study harder), "I could have earned a better grade" (because I know I could have done worse and wouldn't necessarily do better if I could go back), or "I should have done better on the test" (ditto).</p>