Tracy Jan, “Worn Out students choose a timeout: More take break before college,” The Boston Globe, 19July’10, A1,9.

OVERVIEW

Instead of preparing for college, a growing number of high school grads are choosing a “gap year.” New York City Gaby Waldman-Fried might have been going to Olin College of Engineering, but instead is volunteering on a farm in Maine.

I was consumed with doing well and didn’t sleep a lot the last two years. I would have five or six hours of homework every night. The last thing I wanted to do was more school.

A surprising blog from MIT’s associate director of admissions suggests to perspective students that they take a year doing anything they wish. In 2009 Princeton became the first university to create a college sponsored “gap year,” offering a tuition-free year of public service abroad. Middlebury College in Vermont is also heralding the benefit of a year’s service before college itself.

Admissions dean of Middlebury College, Robert Clagett, explains it this way:

As the anxiety that surrounds the admissions process has increased, getting into X college has become an end in itself rather than a means to an end. By encouraging more students to step off the treadmill and smell the roses, they can kind of reacquaint themselves with what their education is all about.”

Writer of this article says, “whole cottage industries have sprung up to help match students, for a fee, to the right gap year experience as the practice becomes more prevalent… but the gap year need not be expensive.”

Backpacking through Europe remains popular, but admission deans report more students are choosing internships in their academic fields of interest in hopes of getting a leg up in a down economy, or engaging in public service at home and abroad.

Gregory Kristof loaded six Advanced Placement courses to his senior year program at a demanding Scarsdale, NY high school. Besides that he wrestled, performed on the viola, and studied Chinese Mandarin and art. He’s chosen to delay his entry into Harvard.

To sort of dive right back into that in the fall would be a little bit much. I just need a year break from studying for a year, and then I feel like I’d be more ready to hit the books. (He’ll be teaching English to rural Chinese schoolchildren—along with a friend who’s also postponing study at Amherst College.)

Parents of high school graduates are not always enthusiastic about such delays. Author of this article interviewed Jim Wismer whose son was offered a deferred admission.

I’m a pretty traditional guy, and the idea of a gap year kind of knocked by socks off. That whole concept didn’t sit with me very well. The first thing I worried about was the mental atrophy.

But Wismer’s son, Matt, seems to be using the postponement well. He’s attended the Future Business Leaders of America conference before heading out to West Virginia on a church mission trip. Besides, he’s teaching himself piano and looking for an engineering internship. His father is rethinking his original objections.

(This interim time) is going to force him to stand up as an adult in the world without the protection of school. I think he’ll be a better student for it.

This article goes on with a perspective from an MIT junior, Victoria Thomas, who did take a gap year, “working in a renewable energy start-up in San Francisco, teaching preschool in Senegal, learning to fly planes in Colorado, and helping MIT alumni build a flying car.” This in-between year resulted in her feeling less stressed about college demands than her peers who went straight from high school to college.

Like most high school students going to MIT, I was pretty driven and high-strung and hard on myself to get straight A’s. Now, I want to do well because I want to really understand what’s going on in my classes and not just taking the test to get good grades.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Is your interest in this article as a student, a parent, or a counselor of young adults?

2. In your opinion, could more or less high school graduates profit from an interim year before starting their college studies?

3. There is real concern among college administrators and society at large regarding college partying and excessive alcohol consumption. To what extent do you think may young people approach college with freedom and partying in mind? Should this have been mentioned in the article above?

4. What does the gap year have to do with a program of national service—either before or after undergraduate education?

IMPLICATIONS

1. Stress of high school performance and anticipation of college pressures, academic fatigue, desire to live out a new freedom including excessive alcohol consumption and sexual exploration, the lack of full brain development in terms of cautionary limitations of risk, and inexperience in world realities—all encourage experiences that broaden perspective and develop maturity.

2. The fact that college recruiters and admissions deans are encouraging a gap year should encourage us all to consider possible benefits of a serving/learning year.

Dean Borgman,   cCYS