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."

Comments

Don't take a year off now.

[Utopia]

Otherwise everybody starting from your future college to your employer will question about the gap in your education.
Take a year off after you complete your education if you want to.

Re:Don't take a year off now.

[Incongruity]

everybody starting from your future college to your employer will question about the gap in your education.

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.

Re:Don't take a year off now.

[geoswan]

Otherwise everybody starting from your future college to your employer will question about the gap in your education.

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.

A professor's perspective....

[philosophyandrew]

The central question is: are you ready to go to college next year or not? If you are not ready -- because you don't realy want to go, because you don't have the academic skills or motivation necessary to do well, etc. -- then the worst thing to do is to go. In that case, you waste time and money and squander the precious opportunity to secure strong educational outcomes for yourself.

So, from my perspective as a college teacher the opportunity to do it right is too precious to waste. As long as you use your time off to become better prepared to succeed, to get a clearer sense of why you want to go to college and want you want to achieve, or to have interesting and enriching life experiences then educationally taking a year off is well worth it, and it will be recognized as such by nearly anyone within higher education.

Bad move - you'll forget things you've learned

[dgmartin98]

I think it's a bad idea. I took a couple of years off between my bachelors and masters. I had a hard time remembering all the background material I learned in my bachelors, when I started the masters courses. Of course, in your case, it's high school to college/university, but the same idea applies.

Dave

One of the other things to consider

[mhesseltine]

My understanding is that, most of the time, if you are a college student full time, you can stay on your parent's insurance program. Depending on your work/living situation, this may be beneficial.

No general rule...

[Incongruity]

Is it a terrible idea? Might be. Might not be.

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.

Well...

[Snafoo]

I don't see any technical reason why your school of choice would reject you, provided your grades (and/or, I suppose, your extracurriculars) are solid. In my experience, universities ('colleges', for 'merkins in the audience) don't really sweat the details. For instance, they don't sit around saying, "Well, look here, Bob Jones felt it necessary to take a break from the expedition to the summit of human knowledge; cast him into the outer darkness!". The registrars of big unis (for instance, McGill, my soon-to-be alma mater) have many thousands of your ilk to process; if they gave a shit about every little detail on every transcript, they'd go mad.

The real concern is that you might wind up hanging around with "the wrong type." Yes, boys and girls, the existentialists were right: Your sense of self is almost entirely the engineered product of your own consciousness! That is to say: If you tend to kick around with a lot of non-uni humans, it becomes harder to see yourself as the sort of fellow who goes to university; your identity can settle when you least expect it. My friend 'Susan', for instance, took a year off CEGEP(*) to deal with some personal problems and wound up in three-year odyssey of boring, min-wage jobs, grubby leather jackets, bad music and perpetual broke-ness. (It has a certain early-Tom-Waits-ish appeal, I must admit.) As she set and broke dozens of 'return dates' and made the necessitated flurry of excuses, it became clear that she simply no longer saw herself as 'the kind of person' who goes to uni; as her financial situation worsened, her resentful comments and bitter epithets about the 'preppies' attending such institutions increased dramatically in frequency and vehemence. She managed to weasel her way back into academe by dint of hard work and persistence, but I think she now has deeply-ingrained feelings --- or at least, habits --- of alienation towards the campus and her peers. This makes it difficult for her to enjoy school and/or work hard at it.She threw her lot in with academe, only to find out that it had already been thrown somewhere else.

On the other hand, another friend of mine took a year off between high school and uni to tour Europe. She had a blast and is going on to do her Masters in Germany next year; really, you never know.

(*) CEGEP (there's an accent aigu on the first 'E') is a Quebec-only state-run thingamagig which comprises what Americans call the senior year of high school and accredits you with either the (I can never get this right; 'sophomore'? 'little league'? 'First', at any rate) year of university or a vocational diploma. Imagine the senior year of high school glued onto a community college glued onto a university dorm. Yes, I know it's silly, but so is gravy and cheese curds on french fries; it's Quebec, it can't help it.

Do what You think is Best for You

[Raiford]

If you are committed to going to college but you want to take a year off from schooling before starting then that is what is best for you. Don't worry about forgetting any thing you learned in high school: you won't forget what you need and you won't need much of what you learned. I teach at the college level and this is my best advice to you. College is pretty much like starting all over again and learning it the right way.

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.

Probably not a good idea

[ctr2sprt]

I didn't take a year off, but I knew many people who did. They, and I, recommend against it. There's nothing wrong with it; you won't die or get rejected from everywhere. I don't think you'll even be less likely to get into a school, provided you can provide a better reason for taking a year off than "I didn't feel like going to college." If you do internships or other meaningful work, your chances of getting into a good school may improve.

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 road less travelled

[RobotWisdom]

It seems to me that the usual choice is to keep treating it like highschool until you have your degree-- do what you're told, and your income will reward you.

As soon as you swerve from this narrow path of conformity, your odds of getting a degree (and that bigger income) start to plummet... but at the same time your likelihood of finding meaning in your life starts to escalate.

I could only take a half-year off without losing my scholarships, but my willingness to toe the line plummeted anyway, and I dropped out after a year, then went back a couple more times to other schools, but never got the 4-year degree.

I've rarely sought jobs where a degree would have mattered (eg programming, especially) but I've also had to get used to life being a constant struggle, materially, in exchange for a fantastic advantage in freedom of thought.

Some questions, first

[cookd]

First, take the time to answer the following questions:

• Do I want to get a degree? If so, what kind -- Bachelor, Master, or PhD?
  
• What will I do with the year off?
  
• How will this affect the rest of my life?
  

If you can answer the questions easily, skip the next 3 paragraphs. Otherwise, read on.

I am strongly convinced that college is almost always a rewarding and worthwhile experience. There are people at my workplace (software development) who got jobs without any degree. They are good computer people and good programmers, but many (not all) of them lack some of the breadth and depth of knowledge that most (not all) of the college graduates have. You know -- the stuff that you thought you would never need when your teacher was forcing it down your throat. Most of the time, you were right. But some of the time, the teacher was right and it turned out to be useful. College (at least a Bachelor's degree) is almost always the right idea. (Going beyond the Bachelor's degree sometimes makes sense and sometimes does not -- it isn't quite the sure-thing like the 4-year degree.)

Next, if you will do something useful with your time off, this is not a problem. When future employers/college admissions officers/scholarship reviewers see someone who took a year off, that opens up opportunities for points -- both positive AND negative. If you just hung around the house, hung out with friends, played Quake all day, etc., you will rack up some pretty big negative points. If you got a job, you might get back to zero. If you got a job "to save up for tuition" or spent a year with Peace Core, you might get some positive credit. It all depends on what you do with your time. Colleges and employers are usually looking for people who can follow through even when the going gets tough. Those who "take a year off" just to relax might be judged harshly. Those who diverged from the traditional high-school --> college path to expand horizons and do something meaningful might earn kudos.

Finally, you need to do the math. While life is a journey, not a destination, certain parts of the journey are more meaningful than others. What I mean is, by taking a year off now, you effectively slide many milestones of your life up by one year. You'll probably have one year less of a career before you retire. You'll be one year older when you graduate from college. This may or may not matter. Just think about it.

Ok, if you skipped those three, welcome back. So if you don't REALLY want to go to college, it is likely that after the year off, you REALLY won't want to go back, so remember that taking a year off significantly decreases your chance of going at all. Second, the year off had better be filled with worthwhile endeavors since employers and college admissions officers will be asking about it for years to come. And finally, make sure you weigh the long term consequences of the decision.

I was talking to a counselor one day during my senior year of college. I told him that I was contemplating taking a few months, maybe a year off after graduating and after doing a summer internship. Just sitting back for a while, perhaps going to Hawaii, perhaps doing some open source work, etc. I said that I really hadn't had any time off since my Junior year of High School. He knew me pretty well, and he thought for a minute and said that I would probably enjoy it for a week or two, then start getting restless again. And he was right. Those that have the drive in them to move forward in life can't just sit back and rest for two long before one of two things happens: the drive dies, or the drive compels them to get back in gear.

Depends on what you do

[esme]

Personally, I did the opposite (skipped senior year of high school to go to college a year earlier). It never came up in my job interviews, but it does come up with friends and coworkers occassionally. I agree with the other comments about admission: they go through thousands of transcripts, I doubt they'll even notice when they admit you a year later. That said, you might check out getting admitted now, and then deferring for a year. I don't know if that's an option or not, but it could be the best of both worlds.

But if it does come up, in job interviews, admission screenings, etc., I think the most important thing is that you have a good answer for why you did it. I think this is true for anything unusual that you do in your life that people are going to notice on your resume, not just this.

For example, I'm an American, but I've done a bit of traveling -- I spent the first half of my junior year in Prague, went to Paris for a vacation, and I'm now living in England for two years. People see that sort of thing on your resume and ask you about it on occassion. And if you can come up with a coherent, short, meaningful answer for why, then I think it's a good way for people to remember you and mark you out as someone who's willing to try something different.

If, on the other hand, you have a bunch of dead-end jobs, drink/smoke/whatever the year away, and have nothing to show for it at the end of the day, I think it's not a very good situation. You should have some reason better than just wanting to grow up, chill out and get your priorities straight (you didn't mention why you want to take a year off, so I'm just guessing...). It doesn't have to be anything huge, if I was interviewing a programmer and he said he took a year off to work on his photography, I'd count it as positive, even if the photography never turned out to be anything more than a hobby.

-Esme

Sounds familiar...

[TheSHAD0W]

Your name wouldn't happen to be Meadow Soprano, would it?

Personal Experience

[BSDevil]

Coming from living in the UK, reading this thread really reminds me of how US-centric Slashdot really is - not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but a reality. In the UK, almost everyone takes a year off. If they have the money, they go and do somthing cool, if they don't, they scrimp and get a shit job for eight months then go do somthing cool - and it's almost never related to what their degree is going to be in. It's seen over there that the majority of people just arn't ready to go to University at the end of A-Levels (High School). Even Prince William, future King of England (funny how England still has a King) took a year off and went and helped out in South America.

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.

why?

[ameoba]

What do you think you'll be doing in that year that is better than going to college?

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. ...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.

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.

Consider...

[singularity]

I left high school a year early. In the end, I ended up taking more time than I could have getting my Bachelor's degree. This was mainly because I really was not ready to get started in an undergraduate program.

The big thing is that I am pretty positive the same thing would have happened had I stayed all four years of high school.

During my college experience, I took a year off and worked. I sold shoes and did some substitute teaching at some high schools. I travelled a little, and enjoyed life.

Now I tutor kids in math on the side, and I generally tell them to take a year between high school and college (granted, most of these kids are at the lower end of the educational spectrum). Take a year (or more, sometimes) to figure out what you want to do, and why you should be in school.

A year in college when you are not ready is largely a waste of time for you, the college, and the money spent on it.

My advice: If you are doubting going to college next year, chances are there is some reason. As others have stated, if there is a good enough reason, sit out. You are only going to be more ready and more prepared when you enter college.

Provided you can say what you did during that year, future employers are only going to respect your decision. They will see it as a sign of maturity - you were able to assess yourself and see what your needs were that year.

When I was hired on at my current position, I was respected because I was able to give firm reasoning behind my career choice - I had taken time during college, during my year off, to figure out what I wanted. My future employers know that I am not going to decide six months into the job that education is not the field I want to work in.

One thing to definitely look into - you might be able to apply to colleges this year and then defer the admissions for a year. There is definitely information concerning this online.

Listen to the Prof

[Bastian]

I'm a college senior and thinking about taking a year (or ten) off before going to graduate school. The advice I have gotten from all of my professors about this is that I should seriously consider a year off, for a multitude of reasons. The chance to spend a year in the Real World before you turn 26 was a major one, but another point many of my professors made probably applies to your decision, too.

They said that the graduation rate among grad students who took a year off was much higher.

There was a lot of speculation as to why this is, but most of the hypotheses can be boiled down to two possibilities: either the students who go straight on to college are more burnt out because they haven't not been in school since they were 6, or the students who took a year off had an extra year to mature, got some time to think about why they want to go to college, and were in generall much better prepared to get a 4 year degree.

I think that both of these hypotheses are correct. I know far to many kids at my school who got pushed into college right after high school when they didn't want to go right away, didn't know if they wanted to go at all, or didn't even have a good idea why they would be going to college in the first place. The lucky ones figured it all out in a month or two, and the rest have this amazing tendency to bomb out or drop out.

As for the crap that people feed you about it looking bad to admissions counsellors and potential employers, don't listen to a word of that crap. A year off gives you a great chance to impress the pants off of college admissions counsellors - just go volunteer somewhere or do something else useful rather than spending the whole year in your parents' house playing GTA3 and eating Doritos. As for employers, I don't think any employer is going to scrutinize a year off of college as long as you do well otherwise - they're going to be much more concerned with how you handled yourself during college. To that end, it's MUCH better to take a year off before college than a year off in the middle of college.

Seriously, though, when you listen to the advice people give you, make sure you are getting advice from informed sources. Like you said, most the people who are outspoken about this didn't take a year off and have no idea what they are talking about - they're just parroting crap they fuzzily remember hearing from someone else who didn't know what they were saying and were parroting crap they fuzzily remember hearing from someone else. They're probably also assuming you want to take a year off for a chance to goof off - if that's true, I wouldn't recommend doing it, but if you're taking a year off to do something that will enrich your life, teach you anything, or that year off will in some other way set you better off in life, by all means, take it.

Take a year now or never.

[Bishop]

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.

Take the time off btw HS & College

[Cy Guy]

I took 2.5 years off and have never regretted it.

• Since I lived on my own I was automatically considered an independent student for determining Financial Aid (though I think the rules may have changed since then).
• Taking the time off lets you build up your own identiity as an individual. So many people never figure out who they are until they get out of of College and realize that the degree they completed is not appropriate for who they discover they are after spending a year in the real world after graduation. It's very easy to fall into the trap of just becoming whatever your peers in College want you to be. The time off let's you find out who you want yourself to be
• If you wait until after College, you will not really be able to enjoy your time off since you will have a mountain of loans accumulating interest, you will be forgoing much more salary by not working, and you won't be able to ride along on your parent's health insurance.
• If you go to Europe after HS you can drink legally, if you go to College you can't. You are much safer drinking legally in Europe where they have a great public transportation system (and you can live for almost nothing in say Prague) than you are drinking illegally in car-centric USA where you have a pretty high chance of drinking too much and driving into a tree on the way home.
• And if you are a guy, then you will have a much better sex life in Europe as an 18 yr old American than you would as a pimple-faced freshman at College competing with upperclassmen guys for the limited number of girls your age. If you are a girl, the logic may work somewhat in reverse.
• One contrary view would be if you are thinkning about the military or peace corps, if that is how you plan to spend your "year off" then get your degree first. It is necessary for the peace corps, and for the military will pay off your loans while letting you serve as an officer instead of a grunt.

Also check out Choices for the High School Graduate: A Survival Guide for the Information Age which addresses this very question by following the experiences of HS grads who made various choices with their lives and what they learned from their experiences.