Taking a Gap Year, American Style

By Stephen Baxter, July 17, 2002

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In the UK, youth are encouraged to take a year off for independent work and travel before college. Why is it so difficult for teens in the U.S. to rationalize doing the same?

At a cigarette-stained plastic table on the veranda of the Ocean Beach Backpacker Hostel in San Diego, Jenny Mathieson, a tanned young British woman, is stirring her coffee and explaining to me that she is on her second "gap year," or year off. Before university she took a gap year and explored North America. Now, having finished college, she's on another yearlong journey to America via Thailand and Australia. When I ask her why she decided to take a second gap year, she immediately begins to recite the lines she has told skeptical parents and employers in the past. She sits up straight. "I think it's boosting my confidence, I think it's made me able to cope in loads of different situations," she nods. "And I think I can communicate better with people." But then she pauses and leans across the table as a small grin begins to form on the corners of her mouth. "To be honest, I think a lot of people in England just do it for the 'crack,' you know, for fun. If you have the money, you can go away for a year, you don't have to work, and basically spend the majority of the year on the beach and drinking."

As many British students approach the age of 18, independent foreign travel is a highly anticipated event and a kind of rite of passage. Taking a "gap year" between secondary school and university is far more common in the UK than it is in America, where students, "take a year off." Though the two phrases share the same meaning, the American version emphasizes the school or work that person is missing. British universities and parents not only accept that students take a gap year, it's practically expected--even Prince William went to Australia before continuing his studies. But there are more obstacles for the American student wanting to take time off. Parents, friends, and even college counselors advise against it, afraid that the student will never return to school. While some American students are catching on to the idea of a gap year, they are still having a hard time letting go of structure.

	"For many this is the first chance to stand on their own feet--to truly make their own decisions about what they are going to do, when and with whom--even university doesn't give them that much freedom."

The British Gap Year: Choose Your Own Adventure

Earlier in the twentieth century, wealthy British families sent their sons on 'Grand Tours' of Europe to enlighten and educate them. In Germany, a "wanderjahr" allowed time to travel and to be an apprentice in different parts of Europe. "Perhaps gap years are just a modern version," says Susannah Hecht, editor of "The Gap Year Guidebook" in the UK. Today, American and British "gappers" scuba dive in Honduras, build houses in Africa, and trek in Nepal, often mixing volunteer work and travel during the year away. Gap year possibilities are seemingly endless, and its popularity has grown steadily over the last decade or so according to British groups.

While study burnout is one of the reasons for the growing popularity of gap years, one overwhelming reason is because everyone else is doing it, says Hecht. In a national survey of 16-18 year olds in the UK, 24 percent said that at some point they would take a year out for travel, work or volunteering. When asked what their plans were after A-levels (similar to the SAT), 18 percent said they want to travel.

"There is a natural break at this time in people's lives," Hecht says of British students, "so the opportunity is there because there is a lack of responsibilities." She says that gap years are also seen in England as a chance to develop skills and to take personal responsibility as an adult. "For many this is the first chance to stand on their own feet--to truly make their own decisions about what they are going to do, when and with whom--even university doesn't give them that much freedom."

Several companies have emerged to place potential "gappers" in volunteer and recreational programs around the world. The Year Out Group is an organization of 23 companies that offer gap year placements, and the largest of its kind in Britain. It placed about 20,000 of the 100,000 UK students between the ages of 17 and 25 on gap year in 2001.

Parents may take on an, "If you can pay for it, go" attitude, as was the case with Jenny Mathieson's parents. "This trip I started in September of last year. I traveled to Thailand, through Asia, worked in Sydney for three months in a pharmacy, and went up the East Coast of Australia," she says. When I asked her if having a career-related job was important, she replied, "Generally, if you're going to work abroad, you just take what you can get. I really wanted to do something related to my degree (English and Media) but I just ended up working in a pharmacy, which was completely irrelevant. Most people I know did laboring or fruit picking or waitressing."

Young Australians like Julian Wicksteed work as they travel. "Our standard trip is to travel to Europe via a few months in Southeast Asia or India. Once in England on the 2 year working holiday visa, we are able to earn pound sterling, the strongest currency in the world, enabling us to work around. The idea is to earn more money and keep traveling around Europe and possibly the world," he says. "I find very few U.S. travellers on the road for more than six months."

The American Gap Year: How Will This Look On My Resume?

Dave Berry, an independent college counselor based in Pennsylvania believes the most sensible choice is to go directly to college. He claims that although a year off before college can instill additional perspectives and even maturity in the right student, "For others, it can lead to a degradation of academic momentum and motivation about higher education," he said. Berry is also a parent of two college graduates. "If I had been faced with a request from either of my kids to defer enrollment for a year, I would have wanted some kind of structured plan and rationale to support such a request."

	"I was trying to write my college applications, and the subjects are things like, 'What can you bring to our community?' And really there wasn't anything special other than the most basic things: I was on varsity soccer, I had pretty good ACT scores. But I had no idea what I wanted to study, and I couldn't really bring anything special. So I walked downstairs and said, 'Mom, Dad, I'm not going to college next year.'

American students undeterred by the naysayers have been seeking the assistance of companies like the Center for International Programs (CIP) . Based in Cambridge Mass., CIP placed about 250 students this year and 3000 since their founding in 1980. "We have students check off interests on a questionnaire, and we can arrange programs for them just about anywhere," explained Holly Bull of CIP. "You can certainly go do a program and lay on the beach, but students don't want to hang around that long. A lot of people just want to turn their brains off and do hands-on outdoor stuff, but you've got to have some kind of structure," she said. "The time abroad can help you with college applications, and give you contacts for jobs down the line." After talking to many of CIP's clients, two things become obvious: they are very well connected worldwide, and what they are really selling is the reassurance that taking a year off is OK.

Barrett Bijur is a recent graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. At 17, he was accepted to Trinity and decided he wasn't ready, as he put it, "to do $33,000 worth of studying the first year." So he took a year off. Not knowing quite what to do and having no precedent, he hired a counselor.

He and his parents wanted a structured year, so he set a goal to improve his Spanish and to get some career-related work experience. Using the service's contacts and his own, he set off for Mexico where he took Spanish language courses and scuba diving lessons for two months, followed by an EMT course in New Hampshire, a job on a dive boat in the Galapagos, and a marketing placement at a bank in Santiago, Chile. He completed his "year off" by interning at a venture capital firm in Boston. In other words, he wasn't exactly picking fruit or working in a pharmacy to pay for his next bus ticket.

Other American students who have not yet been accepted to college use a gap year specifically to build their resumes. Anika Smedberg, 18, of Damascus Maryland, was trying to write her college applications and got stumped. "The subjects are things like, 'What can you bring to our community?' And really there wasn't anything special other than the most basic things: I was on varsity soccer, I had pretty good ACT scores. But I had no idea what I wanted to study, and I couldn't really bring anything special. So I walked downstairs and said, 'Mom, Dad, I'm not going to college next year.' And they looked at me and said, 'OK, so what are you going to do?'"

After her mother mentioned the dilemma to a friend, they discovered the CIP. Anika went to Guatemala to study Spanish at a language school, worked on a Leatherback Turtle project in Costa Rica, came home for Christmas, and went back to Costa Rica for the turtles. Halfway through the year, she raced to fill out an application to Hawaii Pacific University. On the basis of her college essay about her travels and her transcript (the ACT scores hadn't yet been sent), she was accepted. The plan worked. "The year off was exactly what I needed," said Anika. "It was so much fun deciding what I was going to do. It was like, 'do you want to work on an organic farm in Australia, or go to Art school in Florence, or anything you wanted to do anywhere in the world, written on a sheet of paper right in front of you."

Harvard: An Unlikely Supporter of the Gap Year?

For the last 30 years, the letter of admission for Harvard College expressly proposes that students take a year off. According to the Dean of Admissions, most other Ivies are also in favor of the gap year.

Citing the stressful admissions process and resume building that Harvard applicants face, two years ago Dean of Admissions William Fitzsimmons penned an article entitled "Time Out or Burn Out for the Next Generation," advocating that students take time off before attending college. Well-intentioned parents, he says, mold their children from pre-school to high school in preparation for admission in to one of the Ivies. "Professional college counselors (either independent or school-based) appear on the scene early, sometimes in middle school, to begin to structure students' academic and extracurricular profiles for entrance to the 'right' college," Fitzsimmons writes. The pressures intensifies as summers are spent in SAT prep courses, structured sports camps, and music academies in the ultimate hopes that their sons and daughters may perfect such a skill--and more importantly, impress an admissions committee.

"We believe that students use their opportunities in college much more effectively," said Fitzsimmons recently, "if they have had some chance to get some perspective and get away." Normally about fifty to seventy of the 1600 incoming freshmen exercise their option to defer for the year.

But he doesn't think the gap year should be a means to get into college, rather it should be taken for personal growth and relaxation. "What we want them to do is look inside themselves and think of some activities that they might value for their own sake," he said. "Do something that if they were to look back in 50 years think, gee, this is something that I cared about and was near and dear to me. Find something that you truly want to do, not your parents, not what your friends think is cool, it's not what society thinks is the so-called 'right' thing to do."

Great. Now How Do I Pay For It?

Of course, it is easier to pay for a gap year before college if you have deep pockets. In Britain gap years are predominantly taken by middle and upper class young people, according to Richard Oliver of the Year Out Group. Because the motivation to travel is there and university is relatively cheap compared to the States, Emma Warne, also of the Year Out Group says that students from all walks of life take a gap year. Many British students will work during their holidays, evenings and weekends to save money for their gap year, she says. "I don't think there's any difference in the background of the student, "it just depends on how much they want to go on a gap year. Many lower class students will work a lot harder at achieving their goals than those in the upper classes as they do not have as much money."

Meanwhile, many American students simply hope to be able to pay for college tuition, let alone a romp around the world. Americans considering a gap year tend to be more privileged because it is easier to afford travel, especially when consultants like the CIP arrange trips to the tune of $1900. If better off students in the US have thought of taking a gap year only in structured terms, the loosely organized, work-as-you-go budget trip seems to be of even less interest to less priveleged American youths.

Gap year vet Barrett Bijur, now 25, explains the anxiety many young Americans have at 17. "I think for most kids, it's scary. I mean, taking a leap like that and doing things that are strange and new and having to work at a young age, at jobs where you really have to earn the money, I think that can be intimidating," he said. "But there's counselors out there, who advise kids on how to do this, and I met with one of them, which I now regret because I gave them a lot of money and I was not thrilled with the services provided. But he instilled a lot of confidence in me, you know, "You can do this, this is an OK thing." That is really what you're paying for with the structured counseling programs: confidence, reassurance, and an environment that says its OK to delay college and do something different.

While American students may not have truly caught on to the spontaneous spirit of a gap year, at least they're trying to get out and see the world. Maybe at a weathered youth hostel, like the one in Ocean Beach where Jenny and I sat, an American on gap year might peruse the tattered paperbacks in the bookshelf, pick up a Mark Twain novel, and finally understand what it meant when he wrote, "Don't let school get in the way of your education."

Stephen Baxter's fantasy gap year itinerary would include Sumatra, Ericeira and Florianopolis. He is 22.