GAP YEAR - Is taking a year off the right move?

Spend time preparing before college to enhance your college experience!

STUDENTS THAT TAKE A GAP YEAR USUALLY GO FURTHER OVERALL!

For numerous individuals, going directly to college and then entering the workforce is considered the ideal path. However, what if taking a break during this period—specifically, a gap year before college—could alleviate stress and burnout, enhance your academic performance and leadership skills in the future, and assist you in discovering your true purpose? Studies and interviews with those who have taken gap years reveal its potential benefits. The following report by DJ DiDonna a senior lecturer in entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School and the founder of The Sabbatical Project, is a practical guide on the logistics of a gap year, and can help you determine if it's the right choice for you.

The Benefits of a Gap Year

On almost every metric, pursuing a college degree remains a sound decision. That’s not in question. The timing of that education, however, is. For many, taking a gap year — typically defined as an academic year-long break between secondary school and university — can reduce stress and burnout, improve academic performance, and be instrumental in finding purpose.

Reducing stress and burnout.

It’s been almost 25 years since members of the Harvard admissions board wrote a New York Times op-ed expressing concern for their increasingly stressed-out student base and recommending a “time-out” for incoming freshmen. Referencing the explosion of admissions counseling services and the pressure to pile on extracurricular activities, they encouraged high school students to pause “before burnout becomes the hallmark of their generation.” (Spoiler: It did.)

Recent research on mental illness among college freshmen reinforces these observations. A 2018 study found that over one-third of incoming freshman suffered from mental health problems (and this was before Covid-19 led to remote classes). The same study also found that mental health issues corresponded with lower academic performance and higher dropout rates. Gap year students, however return to school with higher motivation and better performance than their peers, according to a separate study. They’re also able to momentarily set aside the pressures and stress of normal academic life in exchange for “fun, enjoyment, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Improving academic performance and leadership.

The most rigorous study of the academic impact of gap years in the United States was conducted in 2012 by the then-dean of admissions at Middlebury College in Vermont, Robert Clagett. Wanting to better understand the impact of gap years among his students, Clagett built a model to predict academic and extracurricular success. His approach, based on years of student applications and transcripts, discovered that gap year alumni had significantly higher GPAs than originally predicted for their freshman years, an effect which held throughout their four years at school. Gap year alums also held a disproportionate number of leadership positions on campus.

Crucially, this impact was even stronger for students at the lower end of the grade distribution. In 2010, Australian psychologist Andrew Martin hypothesized that “a gap year may be one means of addressing motivational difficulties,” and foster increased academic motivation.

As for your parents’ big concern: Will my kid ever even return to college? Studies show no difference in matriculation or graduation rates between gap year takers and their peers, indicating instead an increase in academic performance among gap year alums. It could be that a major based on intrinsic factors, like personal experience and discovered interest, has more staying power than one linked to extrinsic factors, like parental nudging.

Finding your purpose.

It’s one thing to work hard and accumulate debt in support of something that feels like it’s aligned with who you are. It’s another to spend your formative and unencumbered years pursuing someone else’s vision — or popular culture’s.

Author and former Yale Professor William Deresiewicz considers this a uniquely modern phenomenon in his book Excellent Sheep: “Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose … great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.” Despite his decade in the classroom at Yale, Deresiewicz believes that a year off may be the best way for college-bound seniors to break from the herd, “to develop a sense of purpose and find out that there’s life outside of school.”

Further, in Gap Year: How Delaying College Changes People in Ways the World Needs, Florida State University associate provost and dean Joe O’Shea found that gap year alumni arrived at college with increased confidence, a better awareness of themselves and the world, and generally more “ready” for the next steps in their lives.

This may be because a gap year can better position you to figure out what you want to pursue in life and learn to take the steps to make that happen. In O’Shea’s book, Dr. Marcia Baxter-Magolda, who studies this period of transition to adulthood, refers to college as a “crossroads” in “self-authorship.” She suggests that “universities too readily supply students with formulas for success, so students do not have to develop self-authored ways of knowing.” In other words, the choice to proceed straight through to college can more like an overpass than a crossroads. What do we miss when we don’t even stop to consider other routes?

How to Take a Gap Year

The gappers I’ve spoken to as part of my research reliably describe their time away from the norm as “life-defining,” “pivotal” points in their lives which “changed education” for them irrevocably. One person described how the experience “changed my core values and trajectory — when I got to college I didn’t have the same assumptions about success.” For another, it “taught me my capacity to choose,” and “I became stronger, I became fearless, I became myself.”

So, if you think this might be the right choice for you, how do prepare yourself for a gap year? You’ll need to start with two stages: finding inspiration and permission, researching the logistics, and developing a blueprint for action.

Finding inspiration and permission.

Humans seek psychological support — not just inspiration, but permission — to undertake something that’s not currently part of our existing story. This is especially the case if it’s something that appears to run at odds with the norm of success in society.

University of North Carolina researchers Dale Schunk and Maria DiBenedetto explored the crucial role having an example — known in research language as an exemplar — plays in helping people change their lives. According to their work, by observing and comparing ourselves against the successful actions of others — even strangers — we feel empowered and motivated. While most people are familiar with the concept of a gap year, the process of taking one itself is not as well known. So, your challenge in looking for inspiration and permission is to find someone who has actually taken a gap year and learn from them. You can start by posting about it or asking friends and family if they know of anyone you could talk to. This will enable you to learn firsthand the lessons, best practices, and possibilities for a year off the routine path.

In addition to asking gap year alums about what changed after taking time off, aim your questions for how they were feeling before their gap year. It can be difficult for those who have already experienced the benefits to remember how difficult and scary it can feel to take the road less traveled.

Researching the logistics.

As you talk to others about their gap year experiences, you should also start exploring what’s available for you logistically.

First, you’ll want to know what your school’s leave of absence and deferral options are. You may be worried that deferring your admission will hurt your standing before you even set foot on campus, but quite the opposite is true. In fact, colleges and universities in 39 different states accommodate postponing freshman year, and universities like The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Princeton have begun offering fully funded gap year programs to some admitted students.

Even those schools that don’t offer an explicit gap year program may defer admission or offer a leave of absence after meeting certain criteria. Taking a gap year as part of an organization can be the best way to secure approval for a deferral; for example, over half of Global Citizen Year alumni received academic credit for activities on their gap years. The Gap Year Association is also a solid resource which also provides accreditation for gap year programs. If you’re self-organizing your gap year, however, know that you’ll want to bring more details and planning to the table.

Developing a blueprint.

If you decide that a gap year is right for you and it’s doable logistically, there are three main elements to consider in your blueprint: your budget, your desired level of independence, and whether or not to travel or stay at home.

Your budget will inform the length of your leave, and whether you will need to work for pay during your gap year. This may be the first time you’re paying for rent and food — so, take college meal plans and dorm fees as your “worst case” budget ceiling, while using online gap year program resources and forums like Reddit to anticipate costs in your intended geography. The Gap Year Association compiles a list of financial aid opportunities, for example, while organizations like GoAbroad offer budgeting templates specifically for student budget travelers.

A half dozen countries offer U.S. citizens “working holiday visas” which you can use to financially support your time off through legal work. For example, working on an organic farm (known as WWOOFing) is a popular way to earn room, board, and a stipend to support your travels. Alternatively, nonprofits and other organizations can opt to sponsor a visa entry in exchange for volunteer work for a specified amount of time. Keep in mind that any income you earn will impact future financial aid filings — likely in a positive manner because it could serve to differentiate your reduced income from your family’s — but consult a tax or financial aid professional, either near home or at your intended place of study, to better understand the implications.

While some aspiring gappers want total independence and the flexibility that can bring, many prefer joining a defined gap year program. A formal gap year organization can help take care of your logistics as well as connect you with a community of similarly wired individuals. Only you can tell if you would benefit from a large educational company with formalized and pricey programming like Education First, or a scrappy startup like gap year serial social entrepreneur Abby Falik’s new nonprofit The Flight School, which aims to provide a tailor-made experiences for free.

And while there’s research about the benefits of going abroad for your gap year, it doesn’t have to be far from home. There are many domestic opportunities in the U.S., from the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) to AmeriCorps. Aggregators and nonprofits like the Service Year Alliance are a good resource to compare options for domestic versus international, paid versus volunteer, and other important decisions. For those outside of the U.S., there are no shortage of opportunities to volunteer or intern, but finding organizations might require a bit more effort. One strategy might be to narrow down to the type of activity you’d like to do, then search online and network from there. For example, Teach for All, which sprung out of the U.S.’s Teach for America, has partner nonprofits in over 70 countries you could reach out to for a stint of helping out in your own backyard.

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In college, we begin the process of choosing our field of work. We meet lifelong friends, even spouses. There are so many reasons why post-secondary education is important. But college has increasingly become an epicenter for burnout, prompting inauthentic career choices and an accumulation of debt that stays with people for decades. Gap year alumni and research on extended leave suggest that one of the best strategies for stepping forward from high school to college may be to step out of this routine altogether for a bit. By taking a gap year, you can focus on first knowing yourself before going on to make some of the most important decisions of your life.