Let’s talk about gap years

One of the biggest unquestioned assumptions about applying to college is whether and why you need to enroll immediately after high school.

When students hint at a gap year and parents fiercely resist, which are conversations I regularly have, my response is: Why not? What’s the worst that can happen? You save some money, and your child is one year more mature and independent than before. Ninety percent of students who take a gap year eventually enroll in college.

Even offering the option of a gap year early on in a student’s academic career can alleviate some of the pressures to excel. Offering alternative possibilities will undoubtedly help students establish a sense of control over their lives. When they commit to a course of study or a career, they have greater confidence in their choice.

Once you question the admissions madness and see through society’s illusions and the many lies that universities tell, it’s hard to see the downsides of taking a year off.

Prospective MBA students are expected to have a few years of professional experience before applying. Most elite law schools prefer applicants who have taken at least some time off following their bachelor’s degree. Except for accidents of history and a society obsessed with prestigious undergraduate degrees, there are few if any compelling reasons for jumping straight into one’s studies. In most developed countries, the standard is reversed. Immediate college enrollment is somewhat outside of the norm.

Gap years can allow a teenager to explore their interests and have a better idea of what they might want to do, or more importantly, eliminate less appealing academic or career possibilities. One benefit of pursuing a gap year abroad is it doesn’t have the stigma of remaining in one’s hometown or moving elsewhere in the United States that condescends to teenagers who don’t immediately enroll in college. Going abroad, before the COVID-19 pandemic, anyway, guarantees that you’re going to meet people from different backgrounds, even if it’s an English-speaking tourist or in a volunteer program bubble. Still, you would have to try very hard not to have new experiences while abroad.

Some of the most interesting people I meet on my travels are the teenagers who had the courage (and their parents the willingness to allow them) to take a year off between their studies. I met one of my best friends, Jan from Germany, when he was 19 and I was 26 while he was on his gap year in Central America and Mexico. He filmed my first UT Admissions Guy YouTube videos when I visited him in the Netherlands after he began his business university studies. I’ve spent time with his family and met his younger brother Luka while he took his gap year in Southeast Asia.

A typical year abroad may cost anywhere from a little bit more than a year at community college to less than the cost of attending your local public university. One memorable American gap year teenage girl from rural New Hampshire deferred her Harvard enrollment to study indigenous languages in Mexico. Another was taking a mental health leave of absence from Brown University. We all met in 2015 in Quetzaltenango (Xela) in Western Guatemala at the Spanish school Proyecto Linguistico Quetzalteco (PLQE). 

PLQE provided one of the best educational environments I’ve ever experienced, and that includes my most rigorous UT-Austin honors classes. All our teachers were local Guatemalans who held bachelor’s or advanced degrees and often worked as engineers, lawyers, or technocrats. PLQE also accommodated parents and their young children, retirees, and working professionals. Each student received five hours of Spanish instruction one on one, five days a week.

I spent six weeks there and improved my Spanish from upper elementary (A2) to lower advanced (C1). While I was taking lessons, Guatemala descended into political protests, resulting in the first president in Latin American history, Otto Perez Molina, to step down following a peaceful revolution. Taking advanced lessons with lawyers or social activists helped me develop more nuanced views on important issues of the day.

For around $300 per week, we received 25 hours of instruction per week and full room and board with a local family. Every afternoon and weekend, there were optional trips covered by our tuition using local transport and guided by one of our teachers to women’s cooperatives, K’iche villages, rural campesino farms, and sites of natural beauty or historical importance. I sometimes served as a translator for less-experienced students.

Consider that one semester of tuition at NYU ($26,500) could fund the equivalent of 88 weeks studying and living at PLQE. You could theoretically live at PLQE for four and a half years at the same price as a full year’s NYU tuition and living expenses.

One of the things I love most about traveling is that the things that seem to matter most back home are almost completely irrelevant abroad, for example your age, skin color, education level, hometown, your material possessions, what you majored in, where you work, what were your SATs, etc. I seek out people who are curious, conscientious, and make an effort to know themselves and our world. All that matters are who you show up as each day and your openness to new experiences.

Saying yes to something is so much easier when you’re not worried about how it will affect your colleague’s or classmate’s perceptions or your college admissions chances. It’s also easier to opt out and say no to that which doesn’t interest or serve you. There isn’t a pressure to commit to something out of a misplaced sense of obligation. That degree of freedom and autonomy is simply something you can never find while remaining in the same system that you were born into.

People taking gap years can explore their interests and develop their identities away from their parents’ prying eyes or hovering blades. The biggest complaint from them and friends of mine like Jan is they feel somewhat out of place relative to their more immature and less socially developed classmates when they eventually enroll in college. In turn, their year or two away helps them excel in college and strike a more manageable work/life balance. Spending time away from one’s hometown or country enables you to see the bigger picture and acknowledge concerns beyond a narrow worldview.

When I followed up with travel friends who’ve taken gap years and subsequently applied for and enrolled at their university, they universally reported that it was beneficial. Around 3 percent of Americans who eventually enroll in college take an intentional gap year, which is, frankly, higher than I would have expected.  Surveys suggest that students who take a gap year overwhelmingly report that it contributed to personal growth, increased maturity and self-confidence, improved communication skills, especially cross-culturally, and helped them find their life direction.  

I’ve met people on gap years learning non-college skills like permaculture, yoga and meditation, SCUBA or free diving, kayaking, salsa and other dancing, conservation, world music and art, wilderness survival, storytelling/blogging, etc. Americans age 18 to 30 have access to one-year Working Holiday Visa (WHV) schemes that allow employment in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and Canada.

WHVs allow the holder multiple entries and exits and to open a bank account for legal employment. They’re entitled to all the rights, benefits, and protections as residents of that country. I know people who have worked on ranches, farms, yoga studios, government agencies, wineries, cafes, and so on.

In college, students who took a gap year tend to have higher grades and graduate on time relative to their non–gap year peers, which contradicts parental concerns that their children will fall behind academically by taking a year off from school.  Taking a gap year may diminish the chances of having mental health issues in college that necessitate a leave of absence.

Gap years improve retention and graduation rates.  Indirectly then, gap years improve one’s graduate school prospects. Some universities even offer incentives for deferred enrollment. For example, Duke University began a scholarship program to a few dozen students each year to facilitate structured gap years.  When doing your college search, ask the admissions offices what their policy on deferment is and if there are any scholarships available to facilitate gap years.

Of course, during our current pandemic, taking a gap year abroad is difficult, if not impossible. At some point in the hopefully not-so-distant future, and perhaps by the time this book is published, our world will have returned to some semblance of normality.

I also don’t think gap years are something parents should impose on their child. Allow it as a possibility and offer them space and resources to make the option realistic. It shouldn’t be a means to an end or an opportunity to bolster one’s resume for a future college admissions cycle. Yet, a gap year will improve your future admissions chances. Anticipating a gap year early on in high school could forgo the senior year application process entirely. Applying to college after graduating high school lessens a lot of the stress and peer pressure because anxious classmates and social media posts do not surround you.

My advice for a gap year is to leave it semi-structured or entirely unstructured. Buy a one-way ticket somewhere, book a week’s accommodation at a hostel, and figure it out. For anyone reading this who has done their own open-ended travels, you know almost immediately that many people are “on the road” taking similar journeys. You don’t stay lonely or alone or without direction for long. That tolerance for adventure is probably not palatable to even the most open-minded families. Instead, it may help to plan a month or two of volunteering or language school at places like PLQE.

I’m not naïve enough to think some parents, and mine included, would ever permit their child to gallivant for a year without a “plan.” Isn’t it strange though, that some won’t blink an eye at throwing three or four times that amount of money to send them to Zoom University?

I’ve complimented the handful of families who gained admission at elite universities but forewent enrollment during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s completely irrational that demand for elite universities remains high even during virtual learning. For some of my transfer clients, I ask what in the world they were thinking of paying full-price tuition at an out-of-state or private university only to spend freshman year in their bedroom.

I don’t recommend paying for some expensive gap-year program that structures an entire year down to the hour. Some of these paid-for gap year programs are better than others. There are even gap year fairs to connect with programs (gooversea.com). Most programs are quite expensive, and there are, unsurprisingly, consulting firms that charge hefty fees to google what you could otherwise find yourself. One family reported excellent experiences with Winterline Global Skills that teaches life and survival skills over nine to ten months, for example, but as with anything, research your options and become an informed consumer.

NYU professor Scott Galloway calls for gap years to become the norm and not the exception. It helps prepare children for the future. He laments, “An increasingly ugly secret of campus life is that a mix of helicopter parenting and social media has rendered many 18-year-olds unfit for college.” 

Many students at elite universities haven’t been permitted to develop the soft skills, the autonomy of thought, or the overall maturity required for thriving on college campuses. Some universities even offer scholarships or stipends for gap years or deferring enrollment, so you can include these questions on your next college visit.

Even if you decide to enroll in college immediately after HS, at least entertain the thought of delaying enrollment or applying rather than defaulting to what everyone else is doing.