Why Taking a Gap Year Matters

Why does taking a Gap Year Matter?

The benefits of taking a Gap Year are many and blend together across multiple areas. Taking a structured Gap Year invariably serves to develop the individual into a more focused student with a better sense of purpose and engagement in the world. From Joe O’Shea’s book, Gap Year: How Delaying College Changes People in Ways the World Needs: “Some studies have looked at the academic performance of gap year students while in college. In Australia and the United Kingdom, economic researchers found that high school students who deferred their admission to college to take a Gap Year went to college (after their Gap Year) at the same rate as those who accepted an offer and intended to go straight there (Birch and Miller 2007; Crawford and Cribb 2012). They also found that taking a Gap Year had a significant positive impact on students’ academic performance in college, with the strongest impact for students who had applied to college with grades on the lower end of the distribution (Birch and Miller 2007; Crawford and Cribb 2012).” Gap Year Interest and Enrollment Trends continue to grow. We don’t know exactly how many US students take a Gap Year each year, but amongst our sources we are able to say that interest and enrollment is growing substantively. The following chart details what our respondents cited as their most significant influences when deciding to take a Gap Year.

Academic Future

Taking a Gap Year matters because it has a direct impact on a person’s academic decision making and future performance. For most students, gap experiences have an impact on their choice of academic major and career – either setting them on a different path than before a Gap Year or confirming their direction (60% said the experience either “set me on my current career path/academic major” or “confirmed my choice of career/academic major”). Gap Year students are perceived to be ‘more mature, more self-reliant and independent’ than non-Gap Year students. That maturity and self reliance are exactly the two things that most facilitate academic success at the university level. Some young people just need that extra year in the world to grow up a little bit more and build their skill set. Taking a 1-year break between high school and university allows ‘motivation for and interest in study to be renewed. Let’s face it: Kids are tired by the time they graduate. When all a person has ever known is the four walls of a classroom and life has been lived between bells for 12 years, it’s understandable that they’d be ready for a break! In that year young people find the space to get excited about the next phase of education. In the United Kingdom and in the United States, students who have taken a Gap Year are more likely to graduate with higher grade point averages than observationally identical individuals who went straight to college, and this effect was seen even for Gap Year students with lower academic achievement in high school.

Employability & Job Satisfaction

Taking a Gap Year matters because employability and job satisfaction matter. They matter a lot. According to the studies, 88 percent of Gap Year graduates report that their Gap Year had significantly added to their employability and students who have taken a Gap Year overwhelmingly report being satisfied with their jobs. Why is that? Haigler found that this was related to a less-selfish approach to working with people and careers. What this means is that conventional wisdom is dead wrong. Conventional thinking says that it’s best to go straight into a university setting right from high school. To delay might mean that a student doesn’t focus and fails to return. It says that delaying entrance to the workforce, or professional pool will set a young person behind his peers in terms of earning power and job eligibility. The research is telling us otherwise. Taking a Gap Year can be a great way to focus on what’s next in a young person’s education and to clarify her direction. Taking a Gap Year is a resume builder and gives a person a leg up in a very competitive market. Having taken the time to really think about which profession to enter, a Gap Year contributes to the longer term career happiness of the student. That’s why taking a Gap Year matters. Sources:

• (Crawford and Cribb 2012, Clagett 2013)
• [Birch, “The Characteristics of Gap-Year Students and Their Tertiary Academic Outcomes”, Australia, 2007]
• [Milkround graduate recruitment Gap Year survey, http://www.milkroundonline.com]
• [Karl Haigler & Rae Nelson, The Gap Year Advantage, independent study of 280 Gap Year students between 1997 – 2006]

Photo Credit: Micah Hallahan