Why Take, or Not Take, a Gap Year
The gap year – that space after high school and before college devoted to experiential learning – can be magical and mystifying. Our guests define the gap year and its many iterations, offer grounded advice for deciding if it’s right for you, and point you to resources that can help you plan and successfully complete the gap year and the subsequent transition to college.
Guests: Jade Domingue, associate director of admission at Agnes Scott College, Victor Thomas, associate director of undergraduate admissions at Washington University, Dean Jacoby, a college guidance counselor at the Albuquerque Academy and a board member of the Gap Year Research Consortium at Colorado College. Moderated by NACAC member Eddie Pickett, a college counselor and dean at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California.
Eddie Pickett: Hello, new and old friends. And welcome to the College Admissions Decoded podcasts, an occasional series from the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or NACAC. NACAC is an association of more than 25,000 professionals at high schools, colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations, as well as independent counselors who support and advise students and families through the college admission process. I'm your host, Eddie Pickett. I'm a longtime NACAC member and a college counselor and Dean at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California. Today's topic is the gap year, a semester or maybe an academic year after high school and before college that is devoted to experiential learning. It's a popular option among some students.
On today's podcast, we're going to discuss the benefits of a gap year. How can they help students to mature and to be better prepared to succeed in college, and what makes the gap year a success? With us for today's episode, are three NACAC members with plenty of experience advising students to prepare for gap years. We have Jade Domingue, the associate director of admissions at Agnes Scott College in Georgia.
Jade Domingue: Hi, happy to be here.
Pickett: Victor Thomas, a senior associate director of undergraduate admissions at Washington University in St. Louis.
Victor Thomas: Hi, Eddie. Nice to be here.
Pickett: Thank you for joining. And Dean Jacoby, director of guidance at Albuquerque Academy in New Mexico and also a board member for the Gap Year Research Consortium at Colorado College.
Dean Jacoby: Hi, Eddie. Thanks for having me.
Pickett: Let's get this going. And so as we start today and thinking about the gap year, just explaining it, can you simply answer just what is a gap year?
Domingue: I can kick us off with that. So at Agnes Scott, we think of gap years as a year-long period between the end of high school and the start of college that some students for a variety of reasons might strategically carve out of what we consider to be the traditional progression for college bound students.
Thomas: I think gap years really take a variety of forms, too. They can be volunteer experiences, they can be internships, they can be intentional and purposeful travel experiences or religious study overseas. So I think it's important to recognize the breadth of experiences that can be defined as a gap year.
Jacoby: And I love Victor's word there of intentional. National research shows that students who take time off between high school and college tend not to go to college, but those are the national numbers, which include a lot of people who graduate from high school with no intention of going to college. And what we think of that makes a gap year different, is that it's an intentional year with the purpose of having some other experiences but with the intention of then going on to college after.
Pickett: I think my favorite gap year story is from my time at Tufts. We had a student who said, "I'm not mature enough to go to college and I need to work for a year. One, to help my family, but also just to have a year away from school." The kid worked at Target for 40 hours a week all year long. I was impressed to be fully frank with you. So thinking about what Victor just said, so the different experiences. They can be internships, travel, volunteering, et cetera. Can you talk about some of the different ways a student might spend a gap year? Particularly to Jade and Victor, what have you seen at your institutions?
Thomas: I work with a lot of students who take gap years to pursue religious study for a year and I think that that can be a really transformative experience. And as Dean was alluding to, always with the intention of enrolling. In fact, the majority of students that I work with, and I'd love to hear from Jade and Dean too with your experiences, have requested their gap year after they have been admitted to Washington U and decided to enroll. I'm not saying that you can't intentionally decide to do a gap year and during that gap year, apply to university. But a lot of students, and I might say the majority, will enroll and then request the gap year. Is that what you've seen, Dean?
Jacoby: That's certainly our recommendation when working with students. All the support systems in the high school to help complete essays, help submit applications is best served for them while they're actually there as seniors being aware of deadlines, all of those sorts of things. Additionally, if you're in a gap year and you're really experiencing it, you may be in a place where you don't have access to any of that information. You may be in a remote area and you want to be able to take that opportunity to go experience that rather than do the gap year. The other thing we've always said to students, and I'd love to hear your guys' reaction to this, is that we've heard from colleges that taking the gap year doesn't help enhance your application. And so why not do the application ahead of time?
Domingue: I can speak to that a little bit. So I would say the vast majority of the gap year students that I've worked with have already applied and enrolled at Agnes Scott, and then they request to do a gap year. For us, we want to make sure that students are making kind of intentional time with that year if we're going to approve that request. However, I do remember an application standing out to me a couple of years ago for a student who was already kind of in her gap year. And I think actually during that time, realized that Agnes Scott was a really good fit for her.
For this student in particular, she actually spent the first half of her gap year working. So she worked a full-time job specifically so that she could save up to solo travel. So she traveled to Iceland and Japan, are the two countries that like particularly stand out to me. She actually wound up like doing some kind of work experience in Iceland so that she could live out there. But that was an example of a student who during her gap year, wound up applying at Agnes Scott. And I think for that reason, really enriched... It informed her decision, but it also really contributed to our global learning classes that we're offering here at Agnes Scott.
Thomas: I think to take a step back to what Dean and Jade have alluded to, if you think of the college search experience. And I intentionally use the word experience instead of process, because I think process really denotes a results-oriented progression. And I think that if you understand the search as a journey where you're learning the skills to be successful wherever you end up, not just fixating on one place where you might end up, you have much more enriching experience and it prepares you for college. And I think gap years can really be a part of that learning experience and developing the skills to, as Jade said, make an impact once you get to campus.
Pickett: Yeah. And I think both Dean and Victor said something about intentionality in this. And we always start with purpose. Like you have to start with your, "Why?" And so why should a student take a gap year? So what are some of the motives of a student to take a gap year?
Jacoby: Since I'm in the high school side and probably talk with students a bit more at this stage when they're thinking about a gap year, what I would say is personally, I believe that almost anyone can find a reason to take a gap year. Even to the point where I would think actually a required national year of service or something else would be a great idea for America. But to try and answer your question more specifically, there are people who they are experiential learners and high school has never really tapped into their real potential.
And taking a year where they can go experience the kinds of things they want to learn in a setting that's a little different than the formal classroom environment. Sometimes students are burned out by high school, they're tired. They feel like they've been being crushed by APs and other requirements of their education. And a gap year's a chance to reconnect with themselves and their passions. And for students who are feeling excited about learning and on a fast track, gap year can be an excellent opportunity to do research or higher level learning and thinking that when they bring that to the classroom allows them to accelerate through their major more quickly.
Domingue: Speaking anecdotally about one student that I specifically worked with who requested a gap year after enrolling at Agnes Scott, she was doing a program through AmeriCorps. She did City Year Chicago. She just graduated from the Chicago public school system and it was actually during COVID, so I think she was being really reflective and really wanted to go back and serve the community that she was coming from. Something else that was really important to her that really stood out to me, was that she wanted to engage in hands-on work that involved racial and socioeconomic stratification. So that once she was coming to college to start exploring her major interest and her potential career interest, that she already had something that she was pulling from when she was engaging in those conversations and pursuing kind of internships and outside of the classroom experiences. So that was one specific example for the, "Why?" Behind why a student that I worked with chose that gap year option.
Thomas: I'd like to flip this a little bit and offer a reason not to take a gap year. I do not encourage gap years because you didn't get into the number one school that you wanted to go to. I think that that is turning the search into something that again, is fixated on the process and the results orientation. As opposed to learning about yourself, being comfortable with the schools that are on your list, and deciding to embrace the opportunities that you have presented to you. It gets back to this idea of intentionality, right?
Jacoby: You had me nervous Victor, but I can completely agree with that. Yes.
Thomas: Great.
Pickett: And I think something that Dean said that was interesting as well, is the classroom, isn't always great for everybody at all times. And so one of my favorite quotes, and I have this in my phone so I'm going to read it to you, is from Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me. It's on page 48 and he says, "The classroom was a jail of other people's interests. The library was open, unending, and free. And so to the students, I will tell you, "What is your library? Where do you want to learn? How do you want to learn? Why do you want to learn in different places?"" And a gap here can be a good time to experience that.
Jacoby: I love that quote. I feel like school has lots of reasons for the way that it's constructed, but it, in some ways, has sort of lost that idea of helping students connect to their authentic passions and interests. And when you head off to college, college offers, and my colleagues can attest to this, their whole institution's purpose is to offer as many different opportunities and resources for students to really continue that authentic journey of where they're trying to become, and what they're looking to then do in the world. And if they haven't had a chance to connect to those within themselves, they're less likely to make use of those resources once they get to college.
Pickett: I was on a panel once and they asked us to complete a sentence in one sentence, college is dot, dot, dot. And all of us, our heads just went down like, "How are we going to answer this?" And so I went back to my office and asked everybody in my office. "I got asked this awesome question. What would you say to this?" And everybody had like five commas and a couple semicolons and our Dean at the time, who's now up at Dartmouth... I love him to death, Lee Coffin. Great man. He said, "College is opportunity." And I think what you just said is exactly that. It's an opportunity. So a gap year can also be a great opportunity. Thinking about the opportunity of a gap year. Now, how can a gap year help a student develop practical, professional, and personal skills and knowledge during that time?
Jacoby: I encourage students when they're thinking about creating their gap year to literally sit down with friends, themselves, or their parents, whoever in whatever setting helps them to be self reflective and to create goals in different areas of their lives. What's a life skill they'd like to learn during this time? What's a possible career that they'd like to investigate or a possible major they'd like to investigate? And then build opportunities around those so that they can move forward in multiple areas of self knowledge and connecting with themselves. More specifically to answer your question, there's a multiplicity of things. Whether it is... there are obviously gap year programs where people have created opportunities and experiences for students. Jade, I love that you mentioned the opportunity for service, as well as the government's involvement allowing that to be something that you get paid to do rather than something that you have to pay.
But I too had a student, Eddie who was, I would say very bright, but maybe not very hard working. And he went and he worked in a deli in the supermarket for a year, 40 hours a week. And being treated as though he had no intelligence and he was not going anywhere because he was sitting at a deli as an 18 year old and having to stand there for 40 hours a week, he learned how important opportunity was for him and how important hard work and showing up on time was. And that was the best possible way for him to learn that. So there's a lot of different ways they can learn those skills.
Thomas: I think Dean, that brings up a topic that I suspect Eddie will ask us about but I think is really relevant now, which is the financing of gap years. Oftentimes, I think gap years are misunderstood as opportunities that are exclusive to people who have the financial means to pursue them. And I think that it is important to recognize examples of gap year, such as having a job, a full-time job. Or doing some sort of work that is compensated in a way that you don't have to fund that gap year. There are also resources for financial aid and scholarships for gap years. I wish that there were more of these and I hope that there is an expansion of these opportunities, because access to this is so critical. But if you do some searching, there are absolutely resources to support the financial cost of gap years.
Pickett: While we're there, are there any organizations that can help families access information that they can trust?
Jacoby: So the primary resource I would point students and families towards, is something called the Gap Association, which was created about 10 years ago. Because before that, the gap year was really a wild west hodgepodge of organizations and efforts and not regulated at all. And the Gap Association has tried to create a professional ethic and they certify certain programs, but they also have a tremendous amount of very good resources for students who are interested in creating their own gap years. So a lot of free information, as well as pointing them towards organizations that they've certified.
Pickett: Do any of these come with housing? Because for some people, the housing insecurity might be a real thing. So housing, you talked about finances as well with financial aid. What does that look like for some of these different programs? Whether you're talking about a specific program or just in general, can we talk about the housing piece as well?
Jacoby: I took a gap year back in the age before the internet. I experienced housing insecurity during my gap year, for sure. And that if you're trying to do it the way I was doing it, which was a lot of it on my own, may well be part of your experience. But the variety of programs out there often host and have housing available for students. Whether it's one of these programs where you travel and you maybe live with a local family in a different country to something called City Year, where they help with housing for students. So most of them, if they're a program, will help with the housing. But if you're trying to do it on the cheap, there may be some challenges along the way.
Thomas: Gap years aren't for everyone, and this may not be an option for everyone either. But if you are comfortable with it, staying at home could alleviate some of your housing needs.
Domingue: Yeah. So I was thinking that, too. That for some students, it might mean that they stay at home for their gap year. I do want to acknowledge though, that that might not be an option for some students, that graduating from high school might kind of be the end of their time in their family's house. So I recognize that that might not be the case for all students.
Pickett: Yeah. My dad said, "Son, at 18, to live in my house, you better be in college and have a job." And I was like, "And? What about or?" He's like, "No. And." True story.
Thomas: Tough love.
Pickett: True story. We used to have a sign in my hallway. It said, "Kids, tired of your parents complaining? Move out." Thanks, dad. Love you too. It worked though, tell you that. Some students enroll in a formal gap year program and others go it alone, planning and designing their own experience. Is one better than the other? Can we talk about the positives and the negatives, or the benefits of each?
Thomas: I think that this is one of the questions that you should be asking yourself as you decide your gap year. I don't think that one is better than the other, but certainly for individual students, one might be better than the other. And that's where you, as the individual, are the expert in, "How will I be most successful with this gap year? How will I learn the most? Get the experience that prepares me for that next step the most? Is that by designing it myself, or is that by seeking out the support of a more formal program?"
Jacoby: I love that answer, Victor. I would say I would add a few things. One, is that back before the internet, I didn't have the knowledge of where to find resources and so I did work with a consultant. So there are gap year people out there whose whole careers are about learning all the different resources, and then you pay them a fee and they help you discover those. And in this day and age with the internet, I think it's a lot easier to find and design your own programs. But if you're a student who struggles a little bit with organizing themselves, while it could be a great experience to organize yourself enough to take a gap here, a consultant can be really helpful. And certainly for families in particular worried about safety, gap year consultants will be able to give a lot of feedback on what opportunities are the safest
Personally... I'm trying to answer a question you asked a little while ago about, "What are some of the personal and professional skills people will gain from a gap year?" My two biggest ones I guess would say, would be self-reflection and then the second is networking. The ability to discover opportunities by just putting out into the world what you're interested in, and finding out that your neighbor actually spent a year in New Guinea and knows someone there who's working in a mission and you could live with them and do good work. You don't know that until you reach out and make connections. And in this age of the internet and texting and social media, it becomes easier than ever before.
Pickett: What about the student who's just scared to reach out to a person they've never spoken to or never met?
Jacoby: It's a good skill to learn.
Thomas: And you'll have to use it in college, right? So it might be a more low stakes feeling kind of environment to learn it in a gap year.
Pickett: It seems like a lot of this is about access to information. For those of us who didn't have parents who went to college or who had a lot of access to going to huge public schools of 4,000 like myself, how do you answer the criticism that gap years are made from more well-off students?
Jacoby: So I work at a highly funded school and we serve students from homeless students to very well-off students. So the average income would certainly be above average for our students. And we have several students every year take a gap year. Couple years ago, I did a survey amongst probably the last 10 years of students and the 90% of them said they paid less than $3,000 for their entire year. So even students who maybe have the capacity to pay a little bit more, there are lots of opportunities for relatively inexpensive gap years.
Pickett: $3,000 sounds like a lot of money to this person over here. I paid less than $3,000 a year for college, so what does that mean for the kid who's really on the margins?
Jacoby: I hear you. I worked two jobs my first summer of my gap year, several thousand dollars in order to take the rest of my gap year. And I think if that's something that you're interested in, there's ways of doing that. And obviously, if it becomes something that you're going into debt for or something like that, I certainly would not recommend a gap year in that situation.
Domingue: I want to say this not necessarily representing Agnes Scott, but representing just myself. I think I have had that perception, that gap years tend to favor students who are a little bit more well-off or have certain access to resources. Like the question about, "If students don't know who to connect with?" I think the first thing I thought of was your college counselor but then obviously, that is really challenging if you go to a really large public school.
But I think also through this conversation, I'm learning about a lot of the benefits of gap years. And so I think part of me is, I think that this could be a really great thing for NACAC to explore a little bit more, is how we make this kind of more accessible for all students. But yeah, I do think I have a little bit of that perception in me. And that's not to say that every student I've worked with who's done a gap year has been of means necessarily, but I do think as we talk about things like housing and resources like working with a consultant or something like that, I do think that that is lingering in kind of the back of my mind. So I just wanted to be upfront about that.
Thomas: Jade, that's a wonderful idea. I think that NACAC could have a role to play in kind of the expansion of access to these opportunities. To your point, Eddie, I think it is part of that self reflection that Dean has alluded to to understand your circumstances, to understand what you want in a year of volunteering, researching, engaging in the community, or perhaps travel. Part of the skill development could be that networking, that seeking out support. Be it through a counselor or through folks in your community. I also don't want to write off the idea of fundraising for your gap year experience. I know that that can sound a little scary to a 17, 18 year old. If you are able to articulate why you want to pursue a particular experience, I think that that could be a really compelling message to people in your community, people in your extended family that might be able to help contribute to you having that experience.
Jacoby: I absolutely talk with students about creating a GoFundMe for a gap year.
Thomas: Talk about the internet being a tool for access.
Jacoby: And I would point back again to Gap Association, which I think is a great resource for people to look at options that cost nothing to obviously options that can cost a lot.
Pickett: And when you think about just like, if you really want something, you're going to figure out a way to do it. You do that in every other part of your life, whether it's academics, it's athletics, it's finance, it's work. So why wouldn't you do it in this space, too?
Jacoby: I think it can feel scary because it's unstructured. Our students are so used to... And I talk with my students sometimes like, "Do you remember a time when you weren't in school? Like, can you remember back where you were at pre-K, you were three? You were in school." And you've been told where to go, what to do, what the steps are, what the requirements are, what the expectations are. I think one of the really scary but one of the best parts of a gap year, is that all of a sudden, no one's telling you anything. Like there is no structure there and you have to figure that out for yourself for the first time.
Domingue: I’m wondering if there is any data about like a correlation between like income and students pursuing gap years or something like that?
Jacoby: Well, I don't think there's any question that gap years started in a pretty privileged space. And that includes things like a postgraduate year at a boarding prep school and those kinds of experiences that were very expensive. And it comes from England. England has a long tradition of gap year. And so there's also this sense of, I guess, those people who are sort of Anglophiles and looking at the British structure as the right structure looking into gap years. But I think that more recently, there's been a democratization of gap years. It's just not necessarily that perceptions have caught up to that reality. And I would say that a lot of the students who are taking a gap year traditionally, even in the last few years, are people from more well affluent backgrounds. The difference is, and what's really exciting, is... Man, I got to say that in a different way.
The pandemic has created an environment where three times more students are taking a gap year. And a lot of them are doing it for reasons based on their income and based on their socioeconomic status, and not wanting to go off to college or not being able to afford it. And the Gap Year Research Consortium, which I'm a part of, is trying to jump on this opportunity to do research. Which we've created some surveys, but we won't have the results for another year or two about what this year and the impact of the pandemic on gap years has meant.
Domingue: Thank you so much for answering that.
Pickett: And students I work with, I'm seeing that as well. So I work at an independent school, but I also work at a community based organization. And the kids at the independent school are like, "I'm taking a gap year." And they have a plan or something. The kids in the CBO I work for is like, "I need to work." And they don't even think it's a gap year. It's like, "It could be a gap year, but I want to make sure you go back to school. So what is your plan after year one?" And that is always the question you have to ask, "What is the plan when you finish this year?"
Jacoby: Right. And how do we give them that message of, "You can ask a college to defer your enrollment and you can keep that space that you've earned and go work." And know that that's something that they can ask a college, I think is surprising to a lot of students.
Thomas: I think that that's another reason Dean, why many people would counsel students to build in that intention to do a gap year and apply to college while they're in high school. While they have the support while they're more proximal to their counselor, to schoolwork generally so that they don't have to be doing that independently while they might be pursuing a gap year.
Pickett: I'm going to throw that to Dean. Since you're a college counselor now, can you walk us through the entire senior year process for a kid who wants to do a gap year?
Jacoby: Eddie, it's so funny you asked. Just last week, I was talking with a student who is very interested in a gap year. And I literally said to him, "I love gap years. It's one of my favorite things to talk about. It was one of the most important experiences of my life and directed my future. And I think we should hold off on talking about it for another couple of months while you finish going through your college experience." I think that the application process can be very daunting and take a lot of time. And thinking about possible gap years is almost a distraction from it. So what I tend to do is encourage students to try to do the college process in the first half of their senior year. And if they want to do a gap year, focus on that in the second half of their senior year.
Pickett: Earlier, you said that students would benefit in applying to college during their gap year. So can you talk about the differences during the gap year versus during your senior year?
Jacoby: So what I would encourage a student who is planning on applying during their gap year, is to get certain documents together before they graduate. They are going to need, in many cases, their final transcript. In some cases, teacher recommendations. And if they haven't gone through the college application process, some of those documents haven't been created for them. They're going to want to get those before they leave high school, so that they can be submitted at the appropriate times and they're not having to try and track down teachers four months after they've left high school. So the rest of the process, college essays, if required, and the application documents can mostly be done online. And so students simply would need access to the internet at this point.
Pickett: Earlier, I also heard the topic of a post grad year. Can somebody just explain the difference between a gap year and a post grad year and still staying in high school?
Thomas: I think often a postgraduate year, or a PG year is sometimes how we make an acronym of it, is a year that's within a high school or secondary school institution. I have often seen students who have done part of their secondary school experience outside the United States take PG years and enroll in a US high school for an additional year. Sometimes, some athletes will take a fifth year, a PG year at a different high school perhaps, to be able to have more flexibility with their training for their sport.
Pickett: So all these different experiential learning opportunities, can we actually talk about what you've seen? And so the actual opportunities they've done, the programs they've done, what work they're doing, what are those? We're going to start with Jade, and then we'll come over to Victor.
Domingue: I think I've talked about two of my students that specifically stand out to me who've done gap years. There's one other student who did a gap year that I worked really closely with, who wound up doing research in Nicaragua. And I can't remember specifically what the research was in, but she spent that year doing research abroad.
Thomas: I've seen some really cool gap year pursuits. One that comes to mind, is a student who was really into bird watching, a bird watching enthusiast and part of the Audubon Society, decided to take a gap year to really pursue that hobby. I've seen lots of students actually, and this kind of happens every two years, work on political campaigns. I think that that can be a really compelling experience for someone who has an interest in political science, sociology, perhaps law school at some point. I've seen students who have pursued religious study overseas, particularly students of the Jewish faith who study in Israel. So there's really lots of opportunities. And I think listening to your instincts around what you are really passionate about, what you think will help you develop some of those skills to be successful wherever it is you end up after your gap year are great.
Pickett: We're going to do a rapid fire round here. So with 100 words or less, if a student was interested in something, a topic I'm going to throw at you, what might they do? First one, if they're interested in languages, what might they do?
Thomas: There are a number of government agencies, particularly interested in security, that are interested in funding students' years studying certain particular languages that are important for national security.
Pickett: Cool. We learn something new every day. What about social justice? If they're interested in social justice, what might they do?
Thomas: I think political campaigns are a great way to engage in that way. Jade?
Domingue: I'm going back to my student who's working in AmeriCorps City Year. I think that the drive behind that was a passion for social justice. I also want to mention that I think that in anything you touch, there is an opportunity to engage in social justice. I think regardless of what route you pursue, there are always moments where you'll be able to use your voice for people who don't have that voice. So that's my take on social justice in gap years.
Jacoby: Part of my gap year was I was a wrestling coach on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. And I will say that my interest and involvement in helping native students access college has been spurred by that experience. And so in some ways, maybe you do social justice by being involved with a community based organization and it's a direct part of your gap year. And maybe it's an outgrowth of some of the seeds that are planted during your gap year.
Pickett: That seed planting idea is one real thing. Kids interested in science or environmental justice, what might they do?
Jacoby: Forest service and the national park service have internship programs where student can ranging from working on the trail crew and doing a lot of hard work to other organizations. I spent a summer as an archeologist in a National Forest during my gap year. As long as you're willing to volunteer and you get paid $15 a day and you're willing to live in uncomfortable circumstances, you can make something like that work. I should mention here, that there is a group of gap year programs that travel throughout the nation and have a fair where you can go and you can talk to organizations running a complete gamut. That information is on the Gap Association website, and I highly recommend that as a free resource for students to visit with providers of all sorts of different gap year experiences.
Pickett: And for those of us who are data nerds and like math, what might they do or seek to find more information as well?
Jacoby: For students or for professionals?
Pickett: Let's go for both, why not?
Jacoby: For professionals, what I would say is the Gap Year Research Consortium has been trying to replicate studies that were started at Middlebury and continued at University of North Carolina. Which basically shows that students who take a gap year tend to outperform expectations in terms of their GPA, tend to report greater happiness and success with their major and with their career, and are less likely to be involved in disciplinary procedures at their college. So for professionals, I would make this the case that there is some emerging data that shows that gap year students have lots of the qualities that we're looking for on college campuses. For students, I think the best resource would be again, I feel like a broken record, the Gap Association has done a survey of all the students they know who have taken a gap year, and you can learn a lot from the data that they report on their website.
Pickett: Thank you for that, Dean. And last but not least, just one important piece of advice that you would give to a student who's contemplating a gap year.
Jacoby: What I always say to students is, "If you're thinking about a gap year, you should take it. That that's a sign in and of itself that you're open to it." And if I can speak on that, is any kind of gap year, no matter what you do, whether it's living at home and working or whether it's getting the opportunity to travel all over the world, self-reflection. What have you learned while you're doing this? Be open to new experiences.
Domingue: I've often heard of Martin Luther King Day as a day on and not a day off. And I want to translate that to gap years. This should be a year on and not a year off. So intentional, engaged. Not time off, but time on.
Thomas: I love that, Jade. And I think in that spirit too, I don't want to be too kind of cautionary here, but the reality is that you might find yourself during a gap year with a newfound sense of freedom that takes you a little bit further away than maybe how you had operated in high school. And to your point Jade, to always be on to not let your guard down during your gap year, I think would be my advice. To follow that intentional plan that you have, so that you are making the most of it and showing up to wherever you decide to enroll with some newfound perspective and experience.
Pickett: Yeah. And everything I tell students, and gap years falls into this as well, is that, "You are your star player. The person you need to please the most is always in the mirror so you got to trust your gut and what your interests are and why. You have to find your "Why?" If you can find your purpose in this year or even if it's just a part of the year, then you've done what you needed to do to succeed in the gap year." I'm afraid that's all the time we have today. Many thanks to Jade, Victor, and Dean for a great conversation and thanks to our audience for joining us for this episode.
College Admissions Decoded is a podcast from NACAC, the National Association for College Admission Counseling. It is produced by LWC. Kojin Tashiro produced this episode. If you would like to learn more about NACAC's guests, our organization, and the college admissions process, visit our website at www.nacacnet.org, or spelled out N-A-C-A-C-N-E-T.org. Please leave a review and rate us on Apple Podcasts. See you next time on College Admissions Decoded.
CITATION: National Association for College Admission Counseling. “Why Take, or Not Take, a Gap Year” NACAC College Admissions Decoded, National Association for College Admissions Counseling, December 15, 2021.