I think at this point, we should just let Ellie be Ellie, as the very idiosyncratic person she is, and stop trying to understand her from afar. There've been 211 posts in this thread, and none of them (my own included) have shed any actual light on her college plans or her mentality. Do I have real concerns about her? Yes. But we have no reason to think she cares or even listens to what those outside her immediate circle think she "should" do.