Well, she could do it her way and apply to the schools she thinks she wants. She may not get in, and then she takes a gap year by default. Not a big deal from the application stand point but she may feel depressed for a while and that’s not good.
My kids both found their schools and that was it. One and done. They knew the outcome might be that they’d have to take the gap year if ‘something’ went wrong and both were okay with that. For one, it also did fall apart when the merit scholarship she was expecting was $5000 less. Turns out they had the wrong ACT score and once we got that straightened out she was good to go, but that was February and if it hadn’t worked out, she would have been on that gap year. I think in some ways she was hoping for the gap year that she could take ‘thru no fault of her own’ as she was very young (only 17) and could say to her friends “Oh, the school screwed up my FA so I’m going to take a year off.” Alas, off to college she went and it all worked out.