This is a topic that's really close to my heart. I know some people on GC know my story, but I'll tell it again because I want your daughter to know that this is completely normal, but she can't let it paralyze her because that's when the fears become true.
My freshman year I went away to the University of Minnesota, a school of 45,000 about 5 hours away from my home in Madison, Wisconsin. I grew up with the University of Wisconsin in my backyard and was convinced, up until midway through my senior year, that I was going to the UW. At the last minute, though, I decided to go away to Minnesota. I was a little apprehensive about it since I'm the kind of person who takes a while to come out of my shell in situations where I'm not comfortable. They would have preferred to have seen me here in Madison, where they knew I was comfortable, or at the smaller liberal arts college I applied to, where they knew I could find my place more easily.
To make a long story short(er), I clammed up during my first few months at Minnesota and HATED it. I hardly ever left my dorm room, except to go to class and get food. By the time I realized that I needed to be more outgoing or I would have no friends, cliques had already started to form. I decided by, like, my third week at school that I wanted to transfer back to Wisconsin for the spring semester. I had planned on rushing, but decided not to at the last minute. I told myself it was because I was planning to transfer, it wouldn't make sense in case I ended up in one of the sororities that Minn. has but Wisconsin doesn't (Alpha Gam, AOPi) or I joined a sorority that I fit into at Minnesota but which's chapter was very different at the UW. In reality it was because I didn't want to deal with facing the possibility of rejection. I was incredibly lonely and probably depressed; I went on crying jags all the time and went home as much as I could.
I ended up staying at Minnesota for the full year and was happier second semester -- I became closer to my roommate and some of her friends became my friends, plus I made some new friends on my own from classes and around the dorm, but I still wasn't as happy as I wanted to be and transferred at the end of the year.
At the UW I decided that I couldn't allow the same thing to happen again, so I had to do everything in my power to prevent my anxiety from paralyzing me. In Minnesota I had worried that I would try to make friends with people and they wouldn't like me -- so I just didn't try. That is the worst possible solution, and the thing was that people DID like me -- they just didn't know it until I got out there and tried to be social with them. So at Wisconsin I did everything I could to be social in the first couple weeks, and I ended up with tons of great friends from the dorms (I was actually one of the most social people on my floor), I played intramural soccer and joined a sorority I love. But even though I'm happy here, I always wonder what would have happened if I had managed to do things right at Minnesota. The U of M was a perfect fit for me academically (the UW is not), and I will always wonder what could have happened if I had made the social side work too.
It's so hard to open yourself up to the kind of rejection that rush and auditions pose, especially when you are in such a vulnerable place as leaving home and being in a completely new environment. If you're a shy person, that can be overwhelming. The biggest thing to keep your nerves calmed is that everyone, no matter how calm they appear on the outside, is just as scared as you. My boyfriend's little brother is coming to the university this year and he's nervous about making friends. The boy has a great sense of humor, has never had trouble making friends before, and is even going to be playing football for the UW -- how could a football player have trouble making friends at a school where football is like a religion? Yet he is just as nervous as your daughter is!
The best advice I can offer her is to never turn down an opportunity to be social. Hang out with the kids in your dorm -- we always say that we can spot the freshmen during the first month of school because they hang out in packs.
Don't be afraid to go next door and see if the girls there want to get dinner with you. Drag your roommate to the club meetings that sound interesting, the volunteer fair, the study abroad interest meeting. See if she can find anybody to sign up for rush with her (going through with a friend definitely makes it less scary!). And included in the social stuff is doing things like rush and auditioning for orchestra. I know that going through rush was one of the scariest things I've ever done, but 95 times out of a hundred it has a happy ending.
Have you showed your daughter GC yet? It might help alleviate some of her concerns.
Sorry for talking your ear off but I figured your daughter could use some support.
