The Case for Taking a Gap Year After High School
I traveled for two months in 2014 after completing my Fulbright fellowship in Malaysia. I spent a few weeks on Havelock Island in India’s Andaman Islands. Back then, there was no phone or internet. We were all in a transition of sorts.
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 is a conversation I regularly have, my response is: Why not? What’s the worst that can happen? A gap year can 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.
Gap years provide little downside and mostly upside
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.
For example, 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, including in the Netherlands, where my wife is from, the standard is reversed. Immediate college enrollment is somewhat outside of the norm.
Gap years can allow teenagers to explore their interests and better understand 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.
Gap years abroad guarantee growth
Wilder and I met on his gap year to Namibia in 2016. He completed his degree at a SLAC and completed a Watson fellowship to study water engineering in desert countries.
Going abroad guarantees that you’ll 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. One of my clients in Fall 2024 completed a fully-funded NYSL-I Mandarin language immersion program in Taiwan during the summer after their junior year. They gained admission to UT Honors and requested a gap year to complete the fully-funded full-year program in Taiwan before beginning their studies. They will enroll at UT one year wiser and with a higher competence in Mandarin.
Some of the most interesting people I met 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.
Gap years abroad are less expensive than universities
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 in Western Guatemala at the Spanish school PLQE.
PLQE
PLQE provided one of the best educational environments I’ve ever experienced, including my most rigorous UT-Austin honors classes. All our teachers were local Guatemalans with 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, the school provided optional field 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 of 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.
Going abroad reframes beliefs and perspectives
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 and conscientious and who 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 colleagues' or classmates' perceptions or your college admissions chances. It’s also easier to opt out and say no to something that 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 something you can never find while remaining in the same system you were born into.
Gap years provide more opportunities to explore interests and skills compared with universities
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 like Jan is that they feel somewhat out of place relative to their more immature and less socially developed classmates when they eventually enroll in college. 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 lets you 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 aged 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.
Working holiday visas 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. My now-wife went to New Zealand for a mid-career gap in her late 20s, where we met at a campsite.
Gap years can improve university performance and future professional success
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, 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 deferment policy is and if any scholarships are available to facilitate gap years.
Even though I’m a big fan of gap years, I don’t think they 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 in high school means you could forgo the senior year application process. 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.
Avoid rigid, fully-structured gap year programs
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. Anyone who has done their own open-ended travels knows 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, including mine, would ever permit their child to gallivant for a year without a “plan.” Still, 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 consulting firms that charge hefty fees to Google what you could otherwise find yourself. One family reported excellent experiences with Winterline Global Skills, which teaches life and survival skills over nine to ten months. However, 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.
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.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this video and received some food for thought about a less conventional approach to your college career. The easiest way to reach me is by email kevin@texadmissions.com