<p>Friend’s D was faced by a similar decision, accepted at Dartmouth and other non-ivy schools. When she visited Dartmouth just didn’t click, she then added Rice to her visit list and fell in love with it, and never regretted her decision to attend.</p>
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<p>One in twenty people can’t tell you what state Bowdoin, Swath, Amherst, Williams, Midd, Harvey Mudd, Smith, etc. are in, if they’ve even heard of them. What’s your point?</p>
<p>Also, I’m sure many more than one in twenty people have at least ‘heard’ of Dartmouth and Brown, especially in the educated greater Seattle area.</p>
<p>I would try to make use of the fact that your daughter has a “dramatic” personality. My older daughter had a hard time making a choice between two schools, and although it was difficult to go through the process with her, the fact that she was heavily emotionally invested in the process helped, I think. My husband and I didn’t want to push too much, but I really saw her as likely to be happier at one school and I told her why I thought she’d be happier there. We talked as much as she wanted about the pros and cons and we emphasized, as we always have, that this should be a choice based not on the school’s reputation but on the fit. The other school probably would have been fine, too, but I’m really glad she picked the one she did. She’s nearing the end of her second year and is already worried about how much she’ll miss the school after she graduates!</p>
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<p>Why weren’t all the schools on her application list schools she would be reasonably happy to get into / attend? With rare exceptions, I don’t think any school should be on a list unless you can honestly say you’d be happy attending it.</p>
<p>There are 7 other schools on this list besides this particular Ivy. I find it hard to believe that there aren’t some schools on her list that are the same caliber as this Ivy, unless her strategy was Stanford, this Ivy, and 7 “eh” schools.</p>
<p>Except for the weather I think lot of the Ivy’s have a fair amount in common with Stanford. I don’t think Californians are nearly as laid back as they like to think they are nor that the East Coast schools are as pressured as their reputation. You can find a critical mass of just about every type of student at any of them. And at least the biggest Ivies are full of Californians. I am not saying that the Ivy is the right place by any means - way too little information here.</p>