Okay op here's my tale of woe. Please see it as a cautionary tale.
I applied to Cambridge in sixth form. My second choice was Warwick. I was academically strong (not outstanding but quite good at passing exams) not particularly confident.
I went to the interview, didn't really like it,told all and sundry it was full of stuck-up, posh twats (I was 17)but secretly felt intimidated and out of my depth. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, I did quite well in the interview and got offered a place.
My mother (was pushy, but not quite as full on as you and you really are very full-on) and the school who'd never had a student go to Cambridge before shat themselves with excitement and then the pressure started.
Oh the pressure. I too had a panic attack in a mock A-level exam (snap) and started to feel that I was trapped and I couldn't get out. Still they didn't see the warning signs. I became volatile, emotional and withdrawn.
Sadly pride wouldn't let me 'throw' my A-levels (and I was worried about throwing them too much so I didn't get in anywhere) and off to Cambridge I went.
And it was then the problems really started. I felt out of my depth, socially ill at ease, surrounded by polished and confident ex-public school types and the pressure felt relentless. whilst I managed a decent effort in the exams, I never felt like I reached my full potential.
By the second year, I felt so low, so worthless, so incapable of escaping my situation I made a pathetic, half-hearted attempt to kill myself (sadly not unusual) and then made the even more foolhardy decision to 'see out' the last year and a bit, rather than quitting and going to somewhere where I felt happy.
I left with an okay degree, but confidence shot to pieces and directionless. A decade and a bit of dead-end jobs followed punctuated by periods of unemployment and depression. My life is slowly getting back on track and it feels like I've been robbed of what should have been the best years of my life. I still resent the pressure my mother brought to bare but she was blinded by the main prize and didn't think what was best for me (which would have been a redbrick)
So, aside from providing some much needed catharsis, what's the point of this?
The hothouse environment of Cambridge and the college system where you all live, eat and sleep together in a bizarre cloistered world may not suit everyone and if your daughter is anxious about this and if like me, she lacks resilience and self-confidence it will be brutally and painfully exposed.
You think you are doing the right thing and have her future interests at heart, but this is not the road to be pushing her down. In fact she doesn't seem to be in the place to make any life changing decisions at all. She needs to find out who she is and what she wants and she needs to do that without her mother calling the shots.
A year out post A-levels would seem to be in order where she doesn't spend it adding to a list of 'accomplishments' and being shoved in whatever direction you want her to go in. Let her figure it out for herself.
Keep pushing and she will resent you for it.