<p>This has been an extremely hard year. My high school senior, who is academically successful, pretty much had a nervous breakdown in the fall. Because of all of this, the effort and such was not put in to college applications. She managed to squeak out some apps to some area schools that are not too competitive, and the top state universities where she was an automatic admit.</p>
<p>She would have been competitive to many more competitive schools.</p>
<p>I think she needs to stay closer by, at a lower stress college, and give it a year. If she does well and no issues, then look to transferring. She disagrees. She is very excited at the idea of going to the state university. She says kids at school and teachers fuss over getting to go to that college. The university is also 4 hours away. Classes are huge. My daughter cannot even go to school events at her high school because the crowds upset her so much. Now she is going to head off to this huge state university?</p>
<p>I am at a loss of what to do. She has scholarship offers to the colleges that are closer by and smaller. The further away large university will cost us more. And I think she will be stepping in to a huge disaster.</p>
<p>She is doing very well right now. In fact, she is doing so well, it is almost unimaginable that everything happened this past fall that happened. I would love if things stayed this great and she could just go off to whatever school she wants. But I think it is far more likely that what happened this fall will simply happen again. She became suicidal. She ran away from home 3 times. The last time she ran away, she was barefoot and it was very cold out, sleeting, and she walked on the ice and hid at a park. While she came out of all this, she still does not see what she did wrong. She says she felt we were attacking her and never has accepted that this is about her perception, not about what was really happening. She has refused any sort of medication to stabilize her, or counseling, or anything else. I am seriously afraid she will go away to college far away, and she will mentally dive again.</p>
<p>Thank you for listening. She is a great student, in the top 10% and her SAT scores are in the 700's. But being smart is not all someone needs to get through college.</p>