The first thing your daughter should be aware of right now is that the number one impediment to religious life for young people is student-loan debt. No religious order will accept a candidate who has personal debt, and many candidates to religious life have had to delay their entrance anywhere from months to years because of the need to pay off debt incurred during college. And, given that many religious orders will not consider candidates over 35, that means that some people with heavy debt will never be able to enter religious life.
Perhaps your daughter should spend her senior year both preparing for college (because she may decide to go and should have that option available) and contacting vocations directors for religious orders. A vocations director can give your daughter information on education requirements, and may also have helpful information on how to deal with student debt. In some cases, it may be that a young woman who enters an order might be educated by her order for the work the order wants her to do. (This was more often the case decades ago, but it is worth trying to find out if there are orders out there that still do this for worthy candidates.)
Another thing you can do to support your daughter is to impress upon her that, if she wants to enter a religious order right out of college, she will need to live a frugal life during college. Any unnecessary expenses she incurs now are going to add to the amount of time it will take her to pay off her debt after college. So, teach her to budget her money, help her to find cheap/free alternatives to expensive purchases, help her plan how to pay down her debt quickly. Perhaps it might help if she considers her college years her first taste of “monastic life.”
