That was an interesting/scary post.
However, I was merely reflecting on the idea that IF she wanted to and IF was able to get into the top $$$ that she wouldn't be required to turn them down because of my financial limitations.
One of the reasons that her middle school encourages students to start feeling out their college desires is so that they can begin to taylor their social/academic/volunteer life to align with their goal. Those with higher goals will have more tailoring. We have one of the top rigorous IB high-schools (2nd according Newsweek's last list) in our county. Her school encourages the serious high achievers with the higher college goals to align themselves to feed into it. I'm not pressuring her to take that path. If she's happy with a relaxed middle/high school experience before heading into the local university, than so am I. However, I want to make sure that she has all the information she needs to make an informed decision as to how she want to draw out her pre-highschool plan. We'll save the getting in stress for later.....
