What Is A Gap Year?

In college terms, a gap year is a length of time (usually a year) away from schooling after high school to find purpose, work, or even volunteer, instead of pursuing college immediately. Many students have even traveled for their gap year, allowing them to experience more of the world before being confined to the endless pages of school textbooks. More and more research is conducted relating to the idea behind the gap year to see how it is helping soon to be college bound students develop.

Based on the research found from the American Gap Association, a non-profit organization in charge of handling the data for gap year students, students who had pursued the gap year in 2012 and 2013 were more likely to graduate with a higher grade point average than traditional students. This research was done in both the United States and the United Kingdom. It also suggested that even students who were not very academic in high school would go on to be some of these students who held higher grade point averages upon completion of college. From 2012-2013, gap year students rose 27%.

Now Gap Year Students Are Being Noticed

A handful of universities have taken notice to the recent increasing amount of students participating in gap years and offering a portion of their financial aid to help still be admitted into college after a year with schooling. Usually, a student would take the proper tests and be a part of the proper process to go accept a college’s offer as they leave high school, but a few colleges are more than willing to work with students who found their purpose through the beneficial gap year.

The University Of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is one of the colleges participating in helping gap year students. The school has developed the Global Gap Year Fellowship to grant $7,500 dollars for a student to develop their own beneficial way to spend their gap year instead of school.

How Gap Years Help Students

Besides helping to relieve the burnout feeling that many students have upon exiting high school, a gap year also offers more than that for students. It offers an individual a year to hone in on what really interests them, instead of being shackled and restrained by lesson plans and lectures.

The American Gap Association validates that many students who take gap years do so to fix the issue of academic burnout and have a desire for increased self-awareness. Harvard University — one of the top universities in the nation — fully supports the idea of a gap year, concluding that there is a lot of pressure placed on students in the middle/high school fast track. Harvard’s academic admission officers are “concerned that the pressures on today’s students seem far more intense than those placed on previous generations.” Thus they make sure to note that Harvard has been advising for students to potentially have a gap year for 40 years, and that about 80 out of 110 students will defer college for another year. Students at Harvard in 2000 that took advantage of the gap year would advise every student to do it.

Studies in both Finland and Australia have noted that students don’t perform any worse for taking a year off or going immediately to college. Not that they were outperforming each other, but it’s humble research like this that shows that students will do just fine in taking a year to find themselves before college.

Conclusion

It should not be taken lightly that universities around the nation are beginning to look at ways to make gap years affordable for their prospective students. From talking with students who have had the opportunity, they absolutely agree it was necessary to finding their own balance in school and achieving what they wanted. Even Malia Obama is deciding to take a year off of school before attending Harvard in 2017.

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Source: Lifestyle