Heavy hearts

I have mentioned that things around our house have been a little tense; our daughter had applied to 5 California state colleges -- 4 U.C. schools and 1 private university.  She started hearing back this last week ... the private university she was waitlisted; she got into UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara.  Neither one of those schools were her first or second choices.  The other schools were UC Los Angeles and UC Irvine ... she had originally said UCLA was her first choice, but lately decided UCI was her first choice.  She just found out tonight she did not get into UCLA (which was a longshot anyway), and is waitlisted for UCI.  She is really disappointed, and I sure understand why -- UCI is ranked a little lower (I mean as far as difficulty getting into) than UCSD or UCSB, so we were all thinking she should get into UCI.  I don't understand this whole waitlist thing ... they're going to let her know by May 15 whether they can give her a spot, but she has to let the other 2 schools she got into know by May 1 what her intention is -- nothing like making it difficult.  I feel for her ... she is such a great student and always has worked hard.  A 4+ grade point average and excellent scores on her SATs.  I think it is just the ratio of students to spots ... for instance, at UCLA they had 50,000 applications for 5,000 spots -- unbelievable!  If my kid with the scores, etc., that she has can't get in then where do the kids go that don't have those kind of scores?  I don't know ... it's all very discouraging.  So hard to see beyond her disappointment ... as much as I've told her wherever she gets into is where she needs to be, I don't exactly know how to help her with this.  Guess we'll have to research the whole waitlist thing and see what the options are ... my poor sweetie ... I hate to see her feel so disappointed.  Of course she doesn't focus on getting into those two wonderful schools (that are also hard to get into), she is only focusing on not getting into the school that was her first choice.  When I told her "you didn't really think this would be easy, did you?", I didn't realize how true that would prove to be.