My ds was also older when he first attended residential CTY camp, but like SFrog, based on his experience, I wouldn't have worries about safety, downtime, or making friends for any age child. DS also loved his class, and he made friends there. Prior to sending him, I'd met (in real life, not online) another parent who's HG+ kid had attended a CTY residential camp (also in middle school) and her experience had been wonderful, and her mom's summary of camp was "she met her people there".
I do, however, have a 10 year old, and there are things I would consider for that age group specifically (not necessarily CTY-specific, but related to the child's previous experiences and personality):
1) Be sure the class she's registered for is a subject she's really interested in. The CTY secondary classes, if that's what she's taking, meet not only during the day but also for a few hours after dinner every day.
2) Has she been away from you for an extended time before? CTY discourages parents from visiting on the weekend (purposely, to build a sense of community and prevent homesickness). The weekends are busy with planned (fun) activities, but for two out of three of my children, that 3 weeks without seeing a parent would have been too much at 10. By the time they were around 12 years old, 3 weeks was fine.
3) How do you think she'll react if she gets to camp and doesn't like it? We had this happen with my then-12 year old last summer, at a different camp that was also three weeks long. She had been *so* excited to go, she had a ton of friends there, and she's a kid who typically walks into a room full of strangers and has 8 friends within a nanosecond. What happened was she didn't like the classes she was in, and the food in the cafeteria was horrible. About halfway through camp a lot of the kids in the dorm got sick with a stomach virus. It also rained a lot
DD was on the phone almost nightly from week 1 begging to come home. Full disclaimer: this camp was *not* run as well as the CTY camp - the food at CTY was fine from all reports I've heard, the kids are only in one class and it's a much higher level type class. So CTY has a much higher probability of being a good fit. OTOH, we'd known over 20 families in real life who'd sent their kids to this other camp and had great experiences, so having our usually incredibly adaptable dd have a hard time with it was a very unexpected surprise. The upside - she's adaptable and she soldiered through it. Had the same thing happened to our younger dd, who doesn't deal well with stress when she's not with us, we would undoubtedly have had to send her home after the first week.
4) Does she need phone calls and electronics for reassurance when she's homesick? CTY doesn't allow electronics other than phones, and campers are only supposed to call home during certain times (I think there was a window each morning and each night). DS called us but felt like he couldn't/shouldn't call each day, and didn't talk for long when he did call. If this sounds horrid, it really wasn't - he had an RA checking in on him and we could tell that from the calls. I feel that if he'd been in a situation where he was feeling homesick we would have been notified right away by CTY. It's just not a camp where a child who is homesick can spend a lot of time talking to parents. The CTY philosophy is that you keep the kids active and engaged to ward off homesickness - and it really works, at least for the older kids.
DS really loved his camp experience. What he loved was a combo of the experience of living on a college campus, being in a class that was engaging, and he was also a fan of the cheeseburger option at meals. Those things were all great, but I think the best part of it for ds was meeting other kids that he naturally "fit" in with.
polarbear
eta - I wanted to clarify - the CTY camps I was referring to are the Intensive Studies camps that you have to have higher qualifying scores for; the other residential camps might be run differently. It's also possible that your child would have a different experience (staff/activities/overall camp experience) at different locations, so you might want to google around or ask specifically about the location you're planning to send your child to.
