I have a 3rd year pointe student who I'm trying to take to the yagp. She is learning the "bluebird" variation from Sleeping beauty and it has several hops en pointe. she is a strong dancer, but is having major difficulty with this. I have tried a lot of things. any tips would be greatly appreciated!

I would start with soubresauts(sp?) or changements en pointe at the barre. from there, i would move to simple sissones like, soubresaut, sissone, assemble sousou.
The thing most people dont get is the clutching of the foot.
For example, when you have someone stand in first, plie, stay in plie rolling up to pointe, you usually have them stretch through the ankle so they are past the box. In this situation, we need the opposite: staying on top of the box, not pressing past it.
Then I would move all the barre exercises into the center.
We practice hops in attitude turning, with a releve to arabesque at the end- so those might help.
If all else fails, you could change the choreo to: echappe, close, echappe, close, releve attitude devant, fondue in a passe or coupee position, then releve to arabesque, pas de bouree.

Take her back to the barre and put her into cou de pied en pointe. From there, keeping her platform totally flat to the floor, have her do a set of demi plies. Repeat with the other foot. This will help her feel the position her foot needs to be in against the floor for the hops, and also strengthen the musculature she needs to make it happen.

I had a teacher once who taught hops en pointe by telling us to show him "bad pointe technique". In other words, bent knee, bent ankle, like a Dolly Dinkle kid with weak knees trying to get over the box by compromising in the ankle. It's kind of a silly image, but it makes sense, and it works. Because the first instinct for a student who has been taught nothing but "good pointe technique" is to plie in the knee and not the ankle, taking the foot over the box too far to maintain balance.

I 2nd everything said above. I teach changements first.