Let’s face it: high school in America has become exhausting and unpleasant for many high school students. They spend so much time and energy preparing for college that they barely have time to think about what’s important. Many kids are just burned out by the age of 18. As a result, more and more students are asking themselves, “should I take a gap year?”
Here at Great College Advice, we are huge fans of taking some time off between high school and college. There are many, many benefits to taking some time to regroup, refocus, and refresh before launching into your higher education plans.
Why should I take a gap year?
While there are scads of reasons to take a gap year, your decision about whether to take time off between high school and college may fall into one or more of the following categories.
Burn out
High school is no longer the free-wheeling world of Ritchie Cunningham and the Fonz of Happy Days. No hanging out at the soda shop anymore: it’s all about AP tests, building an extracurricular resume, and preparing for college. Some kids are just exhausted by the end of it, and the idea of running off to college for more of the same can be unappealing to a lot of young people today. Rarely are kids able to step back and ask themselves questions like “why am I pursuing an education?” or “what’s truly important to me?” or “what’s my purpose?”.
A gap year can give a young person some needed perspective. Taking a year off to do something new and different can give a young person renewed vigor and instill a new sense of excitement about their education.
A “do-over”
Sometimes things don’t go according to plan in high school. Some students make some mistakes that lead to blemishes on their academic record. Maybe you’ve earned some grades that just don’t reflect your true abilities. Maybe you were unable to take some more advanced courses. Maybe you took some subjects that just didn’t interest you and led to some less-than-stellar grades.
Or perhaps you didn’t take full advantage of the extracurricular opportunities in high school, and you feel a need to get more engaged before heading off to college. Maybe you’ve always wanted to so some service learning or get more involved in your community. Maybe you have an interest in politics and you want to get fully engaged in a campaign.
Athletes and musicians also sometimes want some extra time to build their skills and improve their ability to either be recruited or to get into programs that require a higher level of ability than what they are able to achieve upon high school graduation. These students may want to spend some extra time on their sport or in developing repertoire for auditions.
A gap year can give such students the opportunity to make up for past mistakes or to make needed improvements in their skills before heading off to college.
Exploration
Perhaps you are confident that you want to go to college, but you lack academic or professional direction. Maybe you feel that college would make more sense to you if you had a better idea of what you want to study or what sorts of careers might interest you. A gap year can help you explore these educational and professional paths.
Or maybe you have a hankering for adventure and want to explore the world in new ways. Maybe you want to live in a new place, learn a new language, or engage deeply in a personal hobby or other interest. A gap year would be a perfect time to do this sort of exploration, and the lessons you learn might help you feel more confident about incorporating your sense of adventure into your future plans for college and beyond.
What do college admissions officers think if you take a gap year?
Generally, they will love it.
Colleges actually like students to take gap years before enrolling. Many actually encourage gap years, including the Ivy League. At Harvard, between 80 and 130 students defer admission each year to take a gap year (including Malia Obama). William Fitzsimmons, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Harvard College weighs in favor of taking time off between high school and the first year of college to pursue a special project or activity, work, or spend time in another meaningful way.
Princeton University also promotes taking a gap year via its Bridge Year Program. Since 2009, admitted students have been able to apply for a tuition-free nine-month service post at one of five international locations. Up to 35 students are currently in Bolivia, Cambodia, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia and Senegal.
At Great College Advice, we have worked with many, many students who have pursued gap year experiences, and not one has ever been questioned. My own son, along with five of his cousins, have taken gap years for a variety of reasons and to pursue a variety of goals.
Why do colleges love students who take a gap year?
Colleges welcome students who have pursued gap year experiences to their campuses for many reasons. Here are a few of the most important ones.
- Gap year students tend to me more directed, more contented, and more excited about their academic engagements while in college.
- Gap year students are a bit more mature, and have had to learn how to make new friends and navigate on their own.
- Gap year students generally are more independent.
- Gap year students are less likely to be overwhelmed by the social temptations of college life; they party less and are more focused on their own interests, curiosities, and goals.
What are some possible options for a gap year?
There are as many options as there are students who want to take a gap year. Here are a variety of possibilities.
Get a job
College is expensive, so why not earn some money to help pay for it? A job can teach you a lot about the “world of work” in general, and you’ll likely become acquainted with a wider variety of people of many ages, abilities, and interests. You may learn how a business is run, how to contribute to a team, and acquire new skills along the way. And don’t forget that paycheck–it can be a real motivator.
Take some courses
You need to be careful with this one, because you don’t want to take too many credits and you want to be mindful that some of the credits you might take may not transfer to the college that you eventually attend. However, for many students, a gap year is a time to recapture credits, make up for poor grades, or explore new subjects–or whole new disciplines (archaeology, anyone?). If high school has not been an academically successful experience, a course or two at a community college could go a long way to help you test the college waters in a way that is less expensive. Also keep in mind that you can take community college courses in things that are not strictly academic. Ever wanted to learn how to weld or create furniture or improve your photography skills? Your local community college offers all sorts of possibilities at reasonable cost. Often students who take this educational option combine it with one or another of these other possibilities.
Learn another language
As a former foreign language teacher, I can tell you that Americans are pretty lousy at teaching and learning second languages. Our high school language programs are not very robust, and few students–even those who get a 5 on the AP foreign language exams–are functionally conversant in the language. The best way to learn a language is to totally immerse yourself. Fortunately, there are some great programs where you can travel to a country where the language is spoken, live with a family, and get excellent instruction in an immersion environment. While there are many programs to choose from, at Great College Advice we have had good luck with the programs vetted by the National Registration Center for Study Abroad, a non-profit that can help you select a program that is right for you. Programs come in varying lengths, have flexible start and end dates, and are located in interesting places. Take a look at their website and contact them for some personalized advice in choosing the right program for you.
Study abroad in a high school setting
Since the end of the Second World War, a number of very reputable non-profit and volunteer organizations have encouraged students in their teens to study abroad. Some of these programs place students while they are still in high school: American students choose to spend their 10th or 11th grade year (or in some cases, as semester) in another country where they live with a family and attend a local high school. This is a great way for students who feel as though they are stagnating in high school and need a way to shake things up, learn something new, and challenge themselves. Many of these same organizations also take students who have graduated from high school in the US, but who are willing to “repeat” a year of high school in order to have a big adventure in a structured way. Some of the most reputable organizations that organize gap year programs like this are AFS Intercultural Exchange, Youth For Understanding, and the Rotary Youth Exchange. The Rotary programs are actually free (wow!) because they are organized by volunteers both in the student’s local community and in the community of their destination. My son did a Rotary Youth Exchange in Brazil, while two of his cousins did Rotary years in Switzerland and a different Brazilian city.
Other adventures abroad
Perhaps you’d like to explore other countries and cultures, but language learning is not your thing. Perhaps you’re more interested in backpacking or exploring marine science or performing community service in some far-flung place. Fortunately, there are many programs that create adventures abroad for a semester or an entire gap year. For example, Amigos de las Americas (which has been around for decades) offers programs in Costa Rica and Ecuador that explore environmental conservation and food security, respectively. Where There Be Dragons offers programs in a wide variety of countries with different sorts of themes or objectives (Malia Obama did one of these programs before matriculating at Harvard). Global Citizen Year offers a program in South Africa. And CIEE (another program that has been around since the end of the Second World War) offers programs in 15 countries that focus on service, an internship, or language learning.
Community service
Some students want to spend the gap year giving back to their community in some way. Perhaps you have been involved in community service in high school. Or maybe you didn’t have a chance to do so because you were involved in other important and interesting activities. Either way, your community needs you and will benefit from the time you are able to devote to improve it. It is possible to join organized programs that help you structure your contributions to your community. City Year, for example, is one of the oldest and best known community service programs in the country. Participants work in under-resourced schools as tutors, mentors, and organizers. However, just about every service organization in your community would value a consistent, dependable volunteer. Think about the sort of service you’d like to perform and research the sorts of organizations that provide those things. Perhaps start out by performing one-off volunteer projects before targeting particular organizations for your gap year. And you might consider volunteering for more than one organization–but be sure to clarify how many hours a week and how many weeks you will be available for consistent work. The more time and energy you are willing to devote, the greater the difference you can make.
Internships
Another possibility for a successful gap year is to pursue a professional internship–or maybe 2 or 3 different ones. Internships can provide you with lots of professional exposure and can help you zero in on some of your career possibilities for when you graduate from college. There are two ways for you to pursue internships during a gap year. The first would be to identify the sorts of organizations that might appeal to you and to approach them yourself to see if there are volunteer internship possibilities. If you make it clear that you are able to work consistently for a predictable number of hours per week and for a fixed number of weeks, you might have luck in convincing a business or non-profit organization to take you on (most likely without pay, but then again, you might get lucky). The other way is to consider gap year programs that offer internships in businesses with which they have relationships. I have already mentioned CIEE that offers internships abroad. Dynamy Internship Year offers over 100 internship possibilities at its location in Worcester, Massachusetts, where Dynamy interns live together in group housing and cycle through three different internships in their gap year.
Potpourri – A personalized approach to a gap year
Several of our students have developed their own gap year plans that combine a number of different kinds of activities, including employment, further study, and adventure. One student, for example, spent 6 months in China working on his Chinese language skills, took short courses in public speaking and “micro-expressions” (it was the era of TV show “Lie to Me”), and then spent the summer as a sailing instructor on Long Island Sound. My nephew spent a few weeks on an archaeological dig near Hadrian’s Wall in Scotland, then spent two months in Sicily improving his Italian (he used NRCSA to help him find the right program). He then spent 4 months taking a couple of community college courses while working at the Home Depot (he loves DIY projects) where he could save some money. Then he spent a semester studying in Florence with Verto Education, earning college credits that were accepted by the university where he eventually attended. Other cool possibilities are to combine shorter adventures like Outward Bound or National Outdoor Leadership School with other projects, like rebuilding an old VW bug (an engineering student of mine did this one year). The reality is that there is no end to the interesting and fun combinations for you to create a fun, rewarding, and productive year off between high school and college.
If I want to take a gap year, when should I apply to college?
Generally, we recommend that students apply to colleges during their senior year in high school along with their classmates. This can be helpful in two ways.
First, you get this big decision out of the way so that you can focus your gap year on doing interesting, fun activities, rather than trying to manage the application process while you are busy doing other things–perhaps in rural village in Guatemala or on a mountaintop in Wyoming. You’ll be able to enjoy your gap year even more if you have a solid plan upon its completion. (To say nothing of having to take the SAT or ACT again while you are pursuing an internship or working full time in service to your community).
Second, it is administratively easier to apply to college while you are still a high school student. Your college counselors at your high school have you “in their system” as a senior, and their software programs make it easier to transmit transcripts and teacher recommendations to the colleges to which you will apply.
Some students and their families wonder if the student’s chances of admission will go up upon the completion of a gap year. The answer is generally no–it won’t affect your chances, especially at the most competitive colleges and universities. The reason is that the most important element of college admission is your academic performance in high school. A gap year will not change that academic record fundamentally (except in some circumstances that I’ll explain in a moment). Our recommendation is to get the college decisions and the applications out of the way before high school graduation, and then enjoy the gap year without these things hanging over your head.
How do you tell colleges you plan to take a gap year?
Generally the process of requesting a gap year is easy. Once you have been accepted to college and made a decision about the college you want to attend, pay your initial deposit to reserve your space and to indicate your intention of enrolling at that school.
Then craft a short letter to the director of admissions, perhaps with a copy to the admissions officer who read your file and signed your offer of admission. Explain that you’d like to take a gap year and lay out your plans. These do not have to be super specific, but they should demonstrate that you have put thought into how you will spend your gap year. Also mention that you would like to request that any merit-based scholarships that the school has offered you be valid upon your matriculation. Offer to answer any questions or concerns, and reiterate your excitement about attending that college after you have completed your gap year.
We have never seen a well-crafted gap year request be denied. Colleges love students who do gap years, so you should have no difficulty in getting the admissions office to agree to your proposal.
The only thing you might need to consider is that any need-based financial aid you have been offered will likely not be automatically applied upon matriculation: you will likely have to go through the process of reapplying for financial aid via the FAFSA (and the CSS Profile, if the college requires it). This is a process that has to happen every year, anyway, so don’t be alarmed. If you received an offer of need-based financial aid in this instance, you are likely to receive similar amounts in the future as long as family finances have not changed considerably.
Should I take a gap year, and if so, how can I get help planning it?
If you’re interested in a gap year and making it part of your overall educational plan for college and beyond, the experienced consultants can help you combine your academic and other goals into a personalized program.
While our speciality is college planning, we do work with many, many students that make a gap year as part of that plan. We can help you get those college decisions made and those applications shine. And at the same time, we can help you customize a gap year plan that plays to your preferences and priorities.
Planning for the future can be fun. But sometimes you need a little help as you explore. If you’d like to consider a gap year as part of your longer term educational trajectory, give us a holler. We’d love to help you plan your personal adventure.
