My S2 was not the least bit interested in checking out schools from all over, comparing options, etc. He took the SAT once. His score was low. He had no interest in re-testing. When I told him he would have limited choices, he said he would go wherever his scores would take him! I let it go. Didn’t push him/force him to do anything.
He applied to two directional state u’s. and was accepted to both before Xmas of senior yr. He chose the one he liked the most. We were done. He loved his college and would not have done anything differently. He graduated in four years, got a job three months later, moved in a rental house w/ friends and is doing well.
When my S got his first acceptance, he felt all the pressure was gone. “I’m into college” he told everyone. Even though that was his last choice school. Didn’t hear from any others until March 31 and only got into one, and not into the program he wanted… He went with the first one and has loved it. I think some kids just want to know they’re in somewhere and then don’t want to be bothered until decision time.
My daughter is only waiting on one last school. She applied to LACs that she knew she’d get into. She never really acted excited about any school she visited - she liked them all. As the acceptances came in she was glad to get them, but still not really leaning toward anything. Then she started to get invited to scholarship interviews. That got her more interested as she had more contact with the schools. She had her first interview last week - a total recruiting event, but she left it all pumped up about this school. It was really the first time we saw genuine excitement on her part. Maybe for some it happens gradually. I think sometimes her going off to school is a bigger deal for me than her.
Thanks for all the comments and feedback. My son was accepted tonight to a school he considered a reach: Penn State University Park. He didn’t sound like the blasé kid I was ‘complaining’ about. He was whooping and hollering and all sorts of excited. Guess he heard what he wanted to hear (but feared he wouldn’t!)
Perhaps part of the reason for the lack of excited commitment to a college is based upon the reluctance to leave HS and all your friends, and also leaving home. I think that is certainly an issue with our S.
Everyone has offered good explanations for why your son may have been acting the way he has. My kids have been pretty even-keeled about the whole thing too. They know they could be happy at a lot of places and that there is no one “dream school.”
The next few months are obviously when it starts to get real…glad your son got an acceptance that elicited a reaction!
My son had big plans and high aspirations until he actually finished his early apps. An ED and a half dozen EAs, and he was DONE The first accept he got from an EA school with a scholarship and he was all set to go there. Gone was the Pathway B if he did not get into his ED school He was set and done with thinkng about colllege.
I think that is why EA confers some admissions advantages in that a lot of EA kids probably take up the acceptance offers just to be done with it all
Way back in 1982, in the spring, I announced that I didn’t really want to go to college. This was after I’d gotten a couple of partial scholarship offers. I’d always hated school, so why continue? To get a job in something besides a restaurant, that’s why. With no mechanical or sales aptitude, I didn’t have much of a choice. Graduated in four years even though I didn’t like college either, repeated the same routine with grad school, and finished my Master’s in two years. Now I get to see what happens with my oldest “bright slacker” son next year.