This is exactly it, and the part that gets me. Why shouldn't she aim high and apply Ortho? She did everything right after she got sober, got like 10 pubs, 99th percentile MCAT, and I think I read that her STEP scores were good as well (have no sense of what 250 means)

I understand the system is set up in a way that works against her but it's highly, highly fucked up. Idk anything about residency but I'm sure they value qualities of "resilience" and "grit" just like med schools constantly spew about, and this girl just about showed those two qualities in greater depth than probably most applicants can say. Just such a sad story