One of the greatest attractions for me as a college counselor is the accelerated educational arc of preparing for and actually applying to college. Typically, even the most precocious and thoughtful of 17-year olds are at sea over the kinds of questions, let alone narratives, that drive the college application process.
Early on, during the initial college visits, are the sussing out of meaningful and objectively true details about each campus. These externalities are initially muddled by adolescent emotions unleavened by adult experience.
“I’ve never seen so many pizza toppings (and sushi) in a school cafeteria before!”
“That (model) dorm room with the matching comforter, rug and upholstery is so cute!”
Speaking of cute, “That tour guide was gorgeous (not to mention all the boys and girls on campus)!”
Later, hopefully on the second college visit, more critical (and even existential) questions begin to be asked: “Why are all the students so glum and silent as they walk to class?” or “I noticed that even in that famous professor’s lecture, kids were shopping online for shoes!” The latter may say more about the present generation of students (or class size) than anything meaningful about a particular college but, at least, college evaluations aren’t reduced to how many California rolls students can consume in any one sitting.
The college essay is especially rife for such rapidly evolving adolescent consciousness. “I just hate writing about myself. 650 words? That’s a lot. I don’t really know if I have that much to say.” And still, within a draft or two, content is soon overridden by issues of narrative style. “That’s not how I learned to write in English class!” As self-consciousness begins to intrude (“I sound so conceited.”), a more graceful self-possession begins to emerge. A clearer sense of values and identity begins to breakthrough. Voila! A teenager has begun to think about her place in the greater adult world, separate from family and home.
Indeed, the almost magical emergence of how one defines and presents oneself to a group of strangers sitting around an admissions conference table becomes a central element in the now answerable question, “Who am I?” So what does all of this college applications sturm und drang have to do with the question of whether to take a gap year (or semester)?
Plenty. The interval between college applications and mature, ready for college sensibility is vast. The significant number of dropouts, transfers and first semester discontent is sobering.
The most recent statistics (2012) show that slightly above 25% of those attending four-year colleges dropout or transfer within two years. In contrast, students who take gap years achieve unparalleled success:
In fact, in the United Kingdom and in the United States, students who had taken a Gap Year were more likely to graduate with higher grade point averages than observationally identical individuals who went straight to college, and this effect was seen even for Gap Year students with lower academic achievement in high school (Crawford and Cribb 2012, Clagett 2013).
The explanation for such disparate measurements is uniform and clear: Most high school seniors are only just beginning to develop the wherewithal and maturity to dive into university and campus life with the drive, purpose and urgency to immediately experience unqualified academic and psychosocial success. And yet gapping is relatively rare at most colleges. There are no exact numbers for how many students take a gap year. Estimates run as low as 2 percent and as high as more than 10 percent, according to Nina Hoe (a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania studying the effect of gap years).
Although it’s estimated that in the United States, the popularity of gap years has grown more than twenty percent in the last decade, the percentage of Americans who take advantage of such an opportunity is relatively low compared to many countries. In Norway and Denmark, for example, more than half of all college Freshmen take a year off (Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education in Oslo).
Fortunately, for me, I’ve been able to see a similar phenomenon at the three Jewish Day Schools where I’ve worked in the last decade (in Manhattan, Miami and Brooklyn). At these schools it’s expected for a third to half of the students to take a year off in Israel to study (and mature) before beginning college in the US. Side-by-side, compared to their classmates who chose to start college immediately, my gap-year students have reported significantly more satisfaction and academic success in their first year of college.
Nevertheless, my favorite gap-year example derives from a student who came to me two years after graduating from a progressive school in New York. Although her decision to take a gap year began out of dissatisfaction over where she got into college, her first gap year soon evolved into a second gap year once she realized the intellectual and personal benefits of her experience. Her first year was spent in Shanghai where she perfected her Mandarin fluency. Her second year culminated in her tenure as a docent for Mandarin language tours at Stanford’s Cantor Art Center, as well as doing research at the university’s neuroscience research lab.
When it was all said and done -- despite suffering from acute test anxiety, which served to obscure her considerable intellectual skills -- she was admitted as a Continuing Education student (two or more years after high school graduation) at her dream school, Columbia University. Looking back, she readily admitted that she had been unready to begin college right after graduation (partially reflected in her choices of where she wanted to attend immediately after high school graduation). Now happily ensconced as an honors student in in her Junior year at Columbia, she credits her two years off with instilling the sense of urgency and purpose that has fueled her fulfilling collegiate career.
Ultimately, the examples of gap-year(s) success hinge to some extent on how organized and/or well-thought through is the time away from the classroom. Riding the rails as a hobo might sound romantic to some (and could be adequate preparation for collegiate success), just as holing up for twelve months in a man-cave to play World of Warcraft might appeal to those less ambitious. Yet entering the work world or purposeful travel and study is even more likely to yield a hunger to get back into the swing of classes and collegiate life (rather than a diminution of educational ambition or momentum). For many students, the opportunity to enter college a year or two later might be just the perfect solution for anxiety about college readiness!
Early on, during the initial college visits, are the sussing out of meaningful and objectively true details about each campus. These externalities are initially muddled by adolescent emotions unleavened by adult experience.
“I’ve never seen so many pizza toppings (and sushi) in a school cafeteria before!”
“That (model) dorm room with the matching comforter, rug and upholstery is so cute!”
Speaking of cute, “That tour guide was gorgeous (not to mention all the boys and girls on campus)!”
Later, hopefully on the second college visit, more critical (and even existential) questions begin to be asked: “Why are all the students so glum and silent as they walk to class?” or “I noticed that even in that famous professor’s lecture, kids were shopping online for shoes!” The latter may say more about the present generation of students (or class size) than anything meaningful about a particular college but, at least, college evaluations aren’t reduced to how many California rolls students can consume in any one sitting.
The college essay is especially rife for such rapidly evolving adolescent consciousness. “I just hate writing about myself. 650 words? That’s a lot. I don’t really know if I have that much to say.” And still, within a draft or two, content is soon overridden by issues of narrative style. “That’s not how I learned to write in English class!” As self-consciousness begins to intrude (“I sound so conceited.”), a more graceful self-possession begins to emerge. A clearer sense of values and identity begins to breakthrough. Voila! A teenager has begun to think about her place in the greater adult world, separate from family and home.
Indeed, the almost magical emergence of how one defines and presents oneself to a group of strangers sitting around an admissions conference table becomes a central element in the now answerable question, “Who am I?” So what does all of this college applications sturm und drang have to do with the question of whether to take a gap year (or semester)?
Plenty. The interval between college applications and mature, ready for college sensibility is vast. The significant number of dropouts, transfers and first semester discontent is sobering.
The most recent statistics (2012) show that slightly above 25% of those attending four-year colleges dropout or transfer within two years. In contrast, students who take gap years achieve unparalleled success:
In fact, in the United Kingdom and in the United States, students who had taken a Gap Year were more likely to graduate with higher grade point averages than observationally identical individuals who went straight to college, and this effect was seen even for Gap Year students with lower academic achievement in high school (Crawford and Cribb 2012, Clagett 2013).
The explanation for such disparate measurements is uniform and clear: Most high school seniors are only just beginning to develop the wherewithal and maturity to dive into university and campus life with the drive, purpose and urgency to immediately experience unqualified academic and psychosocial success. And yet gapping is relatively rare at most colleges. There are no exact numbers for how many students take a gap year. Estimates run as low as 2 percent and as high as more than 10 percent, according to Nina Hoe (a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania studying the effect of gap years).
Although it’s estimated that in the United States, the popularity of gap years has grown more than twenty percent in the last decade, the percentage of Americans who take advantage of such an opportunity is relatively low compared to many countries. In Norway and Denmark, for example, more than half of all college Freshmen take a year off (Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education in Oslo).
Fortunately, for me, I’ve been able to see a similar phenomenon at the three Jewish Day Schools where I’ve worked in the last decade (in Manhattan, Miami and Brooklyn). At these schools it’s expected for a third to half of the students to take a year off in Israel to study (and mature) before beginning college in the US. Side-by-side, compared to their classmates who chose to start college immediately, my gap-year students have reported significantly more satisfaction and academic success in their first year of college.
Nevertheless, my favorite gap-year example derives from a student who came to me two years after graduating from a progressive school in New York. Although her decision to take a gap year began out of dissatisfaction over where she got into college, her first gap year soon evolved into a second gap year once she realized the intellectual and personal benefits of her experience. Her first year was spent in Shanghai where she perfected her Mandarin fluency. Her second year culminated in her tenure as a docent for Mandarin language tours at Stanford’s Cantor Art Center, as well as doing research at the university’s neuroscience research lab.
When it was all said and done -- despite suffering from acute test anxiety, which served to obscure her considerable intellectual skills -- she was admitted as a Continuing Education student (two or more years after high school graduation) at her dream school, Columbia University. Looking back, she readily admitted that she had been unready to begin college right after graduation (partially reflected in her choices of where she wanted to attend immediately after high school graduation). Now happily ensconced as an honors student in in her Junior year at Columbia, she credits her two years off with instilling the sense of urgency and purpose that has fueled her fulfilling collegiate career.
Ultimately, the examples of gap-year(s) success hinge to some extent on how organized and/or well-thought through is the time away from the classroom. Riding the rails as a hobo might sound romantic to some (and could be adequate preparation for collegiate success), just as holing up for twelve months in a man-cave to play World of Warcraft might appeal to those less ambitious. Yet entering the work world or purposeful travel and study is even more likely to yield a hunger to get back into the swing of classes and collegiate life (rather than a diminution of educational ambition or momentum). For many students, the opportunity to enter college a year or two later might be just the perfect solution for anxiety about college readiness!
Loren Dunn, a terrific Noodle Pro tutor, addresses many of these issues in his April, 2017 essay in Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/noodleeducation/2017/04/24/why-your-brain-would-love-it-if-you-took-a-gap-year/#14ef3f0541e2
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