Slashdot Mirror
Taking a Year Off Before College?
An anonymous reader asks: "I am a high school senior this year and I have been considering a year off before college. Is this a wise move? If you took a year off, were you still able to get into the school you wanted? I have been asking around and everyone tells me it is a horrible move; however, the people who say this are the ones who did not take a year off."
There are a whole bunch of questions that you should at least ask, even if you don't find answers to them all...before you even ask if it would be a good idea to take a year off before college, ask yourself if you really want to go to college (and as a part of that, maybe ask yourself why you should and why you shouldn't)
If the answer to that first question was a 'no', then you've got a whole bunch of other issues to deal with...
If the answer is a resounding 'yes' then ask yourself why you want to take the year off...and, are you the type of person that will really go after a year out of formalized education?
If it's "I'm not sure" then your choice is even more difficult. Going to college right away might be exactly what you need to figure out what you want to do...on the other hand, if you're not ready to go to college, then pushing yourself into it might do you more harm than good...
In the end, what *really* matters is that your heart needs to be into whatever course you take. If it's not, you wont do a good job, whatever it is you're trying to do. Will it make it more difficult to get into the school you want? Well, that depends on what you do with the time off. If you waste it, then it won't *help* you at all (best case). If you do something interesting, or can paint what you did in an interesting way, then it might help. Note, many schools will allow you to defer admission by a year, so you could apply now and get in (if you're worried) and then take a year. But like I said, whatever you do, make sure your heart's in it.
Why is that a problem? If one can answer that question well, it will distinguish them from their peers. Don't be a sheeple. If you can (reasonably) explain and justify what you do, then it's probably a good idea, even if it is the lesser followed path...note though, that one may go with the group while not following the group...so if it makes sense to go the same course as many others, do it...if your sense of things tells you to do something different than most, do it. If you simply fear the questioning that will come from not doing something different from the norm, then you're not doing the right thing for you.
It is better to take the year off before you start than after you start also. Once you start that begins a new thread. My only caution to you is that if you do take a year off, use it to have some fun. Travel, make friends and use your freedom. Don't start working during this time if you can help it. Many times it is harder to quit a job to go back to school once you get lured into making some money.
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
But the real problem is making yourself limit it to just one year. Trust me, I've known too many people who meant to take off a year and then never went to college. Some of them will still be in their mid-20s, so they may go yet, but... frankly, if you're 25 and haven't gone to college, the odds are very much against ever going. And if you do go, you're going to be older than most of the seniors. That may not affect your social life, if you're outgoing and make friends easily. But if you're a little shy already, being older than everyone else may serve to make you feel even more different.
My other problem with taking a year off is that people usually do it for really bad reasons. I can't tell you how many people I've known who wanted to take a year off because they didn't know what they wanted to do. Guess what? Nobody knows what he wants to do at 18. (Well, some people do, but they're definitely the minority.) Even at college, this is true. Most people end up at college because they don't know what they want to do. It's another four years for you to try to figure it out. At most schools, you don't need to declare your major until your sophomore or junior year, and at mine, you could change your major at any time (provided it would still be possible for you to get enough credits in 5 years total).
Really, the only people I know who've been happy about taking time off from - and generally not going to - college are those who already know what they want to do. People who are going to work in the family business, start their own, things like that. Everyone else, without exception, has spoken to me of regretting taking the time off. "Man, I wish I'd gone to college... now I'm stuck in this dead-end job that I hate, and I've got too many bills to pay to quit and go to college."
Of course, your mileage may vary, but you should think long and hard about why you are taking time off.
The general trend is that the admissions process gets harder each year. Thus waiting a year will make it (at least slightly) harder to get into the school(s) of your choice. You might want to investigate applying to schools and deferring admission rather than simply applying next year. Remember, though, that deferred admissions can be rescinded, so there are still no guarantees.
Also, removing yourself from academia puts you at risk for never returning. It's always harder to return to school than to continue at it. If you decide to take a year off, have a definite plan for your return, and make as many arrangements as possible as soon as you can to ensure that you stay on track. I think that taking a year off can be valuable, but you must consider the risk of never returning, whose cost is, IMHO, very great.
You are at the peak of your youth, health, and learning ability. If you just take a year off and muck about or do slug work, you are wasting a limited resource in your lifetime.
Are you "goal directed" and "success oriented?" Is money important to you in the scheme of things? If yes, figure out what you'd like to do to make that money and go to school.
If you just plan to drift from pillar to post in your life, go ahead take the year. If you expect monetary "success," but are not sure what to do, go to your local community college and ask for some help. No sneering! There are generally good resources there for little or no cost, especially in urban centers.
If you must take the year because you are at a loss for what to do with yourself, hunt around amongst your relatives and learn a trade in the year. You can learn about 70%-80% of any trade in a year if you pay attention. In 3 years you can learn 95% plus of most any trade.
Don't waste a year in your peak. At the very least figure out a way to get some outstanding memories by adventuring, say travel in the US and Canada.
Make sure your gap year is going to be *constructive*. If you're just going to sit on your arse all year, forget about getting a place at college.
Volunteer work in some remote part of the world, such as teaching english as a foreign language, is a *HUGE* plus.
Also, if you're planning on just raising a lot of money, make sure you take a couple of months off for travelling/volunteer work. Twelve months of non-stop paid work doesn't look that great either.
School is expensive though. Even if you are going to a University with a modest tuition there is still residence, or reasonable equivalent. Who would be pushy if you say you needed to take time to earn money to afford school? Even if your family is rolling in dough your parents might believe it is "character-building" to make you pay your own way.
If you are not planning to work -- somehow you have the dough to travel around the world, or try to put together an album, or something, my advice would be to keep a journal, a disciplined one. Summarize it. Take pictures. If you paint pictures, include colour photo-copies. If you read serious books, review them, keep a reading log, write down what you learned from them, what questions you had.
Serious volunteering, at a food bank, homeless shelter, women's shelter. These could be really illuminating experiences. Experiences that could answer the criticism that your year off was a holiday, a waste of time. Particularly if you do some homework, do some reading, do some writing, about what the experience meant to you.
When I was a youngster I knew a smart gal who wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her life. So she approached a bunch of people she respected, and asked them, if they could only recommend one book, what would it be? Then she read them -- even if they weren't things she would ever have considered. (Her list only had one duplicate -- Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib".)
As for approaching your first year -- I have some advice there too. I was a teaching assistant. Most of my students had a much higher average coming from high school than I had -- around 95%. A fair number of them had the misfortune of being head and shoulders the smartest kids in their class. Misfortune? Yup. Some students are so obviously bright that they get breaks. They get to coast. High school isn't enough of a challenge for them. They get to slack off, and not do their homework. Maybe their teachers overlooked lapses on their part, because they felt it reflected poorly on themselves? Whatever.
Coming to a large University was a big adjustment for them. Unfortunately, at a big University, your teachers don't know your rep, and everyone else had also been the smartest kind in their class. It seemed to me that less brilliant, less articulate students, students who couldn't coast, came to University already used to giving their education a fuller effort.
If you are used to coasting in high school taking a year off, meeting some real people, sounds like a good idea. Take the advice someone else offered, and take a couple of college night courses. It will help you determine if you really are prepared.
There have been other, longer, discussions here this year that have addressed this issue. They are worth looking for.
Some of those comments from earlier discussions addressed how much room a young person should allow for falling in love. Don't let falling in love interfere with graduating. But college will be the last time in your life when you are surrounded by trim, fit, attractive, single people. As you get older you will probably find your standards of fitness and attractiveness will relax. But singleness will remain important. After you graduate, you will enter a world where you will be much less sure that the people you meet are single.
In high school, and university, you may know people who have been "going steady" since grade nine. But a lot of them are basically stil single too. Even if they seem happy, if they don't have shared debt, children, or tangible property, like a house or a car, maybe they are still relatively single?
If you are still in high school now is the time to have your first love -- and likely your first romantic disappointment. Whatever you do, don't put it off until after you graduate. Your first romantic disappointment? A lot of people don't cope well with that. They do wild things, like blow all their dough, or mope around. If you are still living at home, in a loving household, your parents won't let your moping grow too destructive. And if you blow all your money, it is only your allowance, or your income from your part-time job. Your parent will still feed you. If you feel compelled to blow all your dough when you already have a mortgage, you can do yourself far more damage. You can run through your retirement savings. You can put your children's nutrition at risk. So budget time for being open to love now.
One more peice of advice. If you haven't read Richard Feynman's "Surely you are joking Mr Feynman", go read it. I particularly recommend the chapter he devoted to the sabbatical he took in Brazil, and the conclusions he reached about how science education can go wrong.
From personal experince, I am just coming off a Gap year, and had an amazing time. Was it essentially one year-long vacation? Yes. But do I have stuff to show from it? Yes. I went to a Language School in France for four months; I had an amazing time partying most night, and also have a DELF (French Government) certificate that says I can speak French. I went and volunteered to do conservation work in Zambia (with Greenforce); got to see a part of the world I'd never been to before, and can now get references from them and say that I've been part of an actual scientific expedition (which would be useful if that was my field). I travelled alone (for the first extended period) around Australia and NZ; nothing to show for that bit except some good stories and pictures and a much deeper understanding of who I am and how I function. So, depending on how you look at it, I either came away with lots, or with nothing. But do I regret it? Not for a second.
Some of the issues raised in other posts are true: I've had friends who have taken a Gap year that extended into their whole lives, but for every one of those I know four who said they'd take one year off, and only ended up taking one year off. You'll be a year older coming out of College - who cares? I'm ninteen and going into first year. On my floor is aged everyone from seventeen to tewenty...beleive it or not, not every education system in the world ends at the same age. The one thing I have noticed is that it's taken me about a month to remember how to work efficiently, and yes, I have forgotten some stuff from HS, but let's be honest - that was the stuff I never really knew anyways.
The other question to ask yourself is "Am I ready for College life now?" At the time, I wasn't sure (and neither were my parents), and in retrospect I now know for sure I wasn't ready.
In sum, talk it over with your parents and you friends. Talk it over wirh people that have and haven't done it. Don't talk it over with your guidance counsellor - or if you do, take their advice with a grain of salt (I've never heard of a US guidance counsellor advocating a Gap year). Get really drunk one night and then discuss it with yourself. What's more important to you - finishing a year early or getting a year of real-world experience that most others (in the US) won't have?
As an aside, I didn't have to worry about getting into College afterwards; I applied to my school (McGill) and then requested to deferr my acceptance. As long as I told them what I was going to do with my year, they wree cool with it. talk to admissions people about it. Financially, my parents told me that if I could plan out a year (and not sit on my ass) thay would back me most of the way. The deferred acceptance also meant it was easy to start school again - no having to worry about applications.
I did it, I loved it. Should you? I think so, but I'm not the one taking it (no one here is) - you are.
Cue The Sun...
What do you think you'll be doing in that year that is better than going to college?
...or do you even really want to go to college, or do you just feel it's expected of you? I could almost see 'taking a year off' being something you'd say to your parents so they wouldn't be disappointed for you not going. If you don't want to go, admitting it and moving on with your life would be a lot more productive than staying in a holding patern for a year.
It's highly unlikely, especially in the current economy, that you're going to be able to get the kind of job that's worth blowing of college for. Unless you've got someting solid lined up that's worthwhile (not just financially), this is probably a -very- bad reason to take time off.
If you think you need to 'grow up' in some way (emotionally/socially), going away to college would probably do way more for your growth than staying at home would.
If you plan on saving money for school, it's probably not worth it. Student loans are insanely easy to get and going into debt is worth it; like I said earlier you're not going to make enough money working your first year out of HS for it to make a serious difference.
If you're not certain about what you'd be studying, and somehow think you're going to get a better idea over the next year, being at college would be a much better place. Most schools give you a year or two to take care of general stuff before you need to declare a major, and there's no way to figure out what you want to study short of being exposed to it & dealing w/ members of the department.
Of course, if you're just not 100% certain you want to go, it never hurts to send in a few applications; you can always decide not to go, but deciding at the last minute that you DO want to go isn't as easy.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
A year off is going to cost you in the future. There is no doubt about this. Read the other posts. But if there is somehting that you really need to do. Something that is going to take more then a couple of months. Now is the time to do it. You will not have the opportunity to take a year off after uni. You will need to be working or finding work then. Taking a year off durring university could work, but it most cases I have seen people don't return. So if you have a plan that is going to last a year. Now is the time to do it.
You need a plan. Remember that a year off is going to cost you. If you don't have a solid plan then you are going to waste your time off. In years to come you will regret it. Bumming around Europe is not a plan. Learning Spanish in Spain is a plan. Your plan can be all travel. This is fine as long as you plan it.
If your plan does not require a whole year then don't take the year off. It is not hard to take a month off in the summer to travel. Unless you have to work, there are four months you can take. Even if you have to work you can grab 3 or four weeks at the end of summer by leaving work a little early, and skipping the first week of class. (Skipping a week of class is recommended for professional students only.)
You don't have to decide now. The decision can wait almost until the day you start classes at university. As several posters have written many or most universities will allow you to deferr you admission for a year or more. What ever you do you must apply for university as if you were not going to take a year off. It is much harder to aplly for university if you are not in high school. Once you have been accepted, then ask for a deferral. One of the universities will grant it to you.
A year off between high school and university is an opportunity to do something really increndible. Most people won't have such an opportunity after university. A year off does come at a cost. Unless you make your year off really worth while then you will waste it for nothing. Remember that you will always have the opportunity to take a few months off in the summer between classes and travel.
I took a year off between high school and college and I think it was one of the best things I could have done.
I spent the year as an exchange student to Spain and it gave me a different outlook on life.
As I finished high school, I personally was starting to get tired of studying and being in classrooms all day. Taking the year off allowed me to get away from class and experience new things.
Entering into my freshman engineering courses I found that unlike those around me I was refreshed and ready to learn, not to mention a year more mature.
My advise would be to do something productive that takes exactly one year, so that when that finished it will be easier to return to school.
I had no problems at all getting into school after taking a year off, in fact since I decided where I wanted to go during my senior year, I applied very earlier thus bettering my chances.
Sure I will be a year older when I graduate but I only have so many years to be young. Why rush through school??
j.goforth
Untill you've actually been an owner of a small business, you really can't appreciate the point of view of "the pointy haired ones".
Since most small business fail, and you'll probably disolve it when you do go to college, assume that the money you invest in it will be lost.
You'll get to learn about corporations, fed/state/local taxes, 1099 forms and reporting, dealing with irate customers who owe you money, dealing with employees who owe you work, double entry accounting and deadlines that if missed would be a lot more serious than turning in a book report late.
I was a partner in a small multimedia company that lasted 7 years and I am still amused by the misperceptions of people who've never run a business. for example, a typical conversation with some friends and relatives:
"why don't they give you a raise?"
"they is me"
"so you can give yourself a raise?"
"sure, if I want to meet some nice repro men when they cart away my office furniture for missed lease payments"
"but you work such long hours, shouldn't you get more money"
"yes, I should. And if a client didn't go chapter 7 oweing $20K, I might be able to"
"but what does that have to do with getting a raise?"
There's lots of resources available, maybe start by watching Rodney Dangerfield's "Back to School"