mithawk, this is a kind and generous offer on your part, to share what you've learned about the process with other families. Our children have made decisions that suited their holistic needs, and did not happen to include the universities in this group, but if they had chosen otherwise, this kind of advice would certainly have been welcome.
Wren, your DD's story has a lot of overlap with those of our DCs. While the application to an elite was never made, the experience at a less-well-known institution has been very similar. I think it's a reminder that sometimes applicants are not asking the right questions (or don't even know what the questions are at the time) when trying to determine fit. The name and reputation alone are insufficient to indicate whether this particular student's needs will be met there. Going through the next tier (grad school admissions), our DC has let the unexpected benefits of the undergrad experience inform the process of researching appropriate PhD programs with a more thoughtful and personalized set of questions--a discussion in itself, of course.
And fwiw, the research, publication and teaching opportunities and professional connections made at a small regional public have been sufficient to gain admission to an elite doctoral program (where DC does note, to mithawk's point, that the caliber of classmates is noticeably different).
