There are a lot of kids like mine who showed very little interest in college choice. They said they wanted to go, but didn’t take many steps toward arranging visits, scheduling tests, talking about finances. I was the one saying “let’s go to the college fair”, “let’s schedule visitations on the way to the tournament”. Once we got started, they were more willing to talk about it, but both of them found a school immediately they were happy with and were done looking, done applying. I told them both that I was fine with ‘one and done’ but that if anything went wrong, they’d be taking a gap year, that I wasn’t going to be scrambling to get things submitted for late applications. It all worked out. The schools they ended up at were definitely ones I steered them to, but my kids aren’t that picky.
There are a lot of colleges I didn’t want my kids to go to, so I just never brought them up. If there was one either wanted to go to, she didn’t mention it. Worked for us. If I hadn’t ‘intruded’ I’m pretty sure both of them would still be sitting on my couch thinking about college rather than completing their first year.