How to Write a Deferral Letter for a Gap Year

For prospective Gap Year students, the spring is an exciting time. You’ve heard from your colleges and have made choice about where to go. And once that’s decided, you need to ask them to hold your spot for a year in the form of a deferral letter. A deferral letter is a formal request to your future college that asks them to hold your admission for a year so you can take time for a gap year.

You can find out a university’s deferral policy on their website or via a phone call to the admission’s office. If a school is deferral-friendly, they will ask you to write a letter about why you want to take gap time and what you plan on doing. If your deferral is accepted, you usually have to put down a deposit and voila! Gap year time secured.

After speaking with several admissions counselors and walking students through deferral letters myself, here are some useful tips for writing your letter:

1. Be Specific

Colleges have different requirements for what they want to see in a deferral letter, but generally, the more specific
the better. “We require students to demonstrate a concrete plan for their year of how they are actually spending time,” explains Jason Tesone, Director of Admissions at Vassar College. This means including the names of specific
programs or detailing an itinerary if you are not going through a program.

2. Address the “Why”

Colleges want to know why you would like to take a Gap Year and what you hope to get out of it. Be honest about your reasons for taking time before you begin your undergraduate program and describe how you want to grow as a person. Peter Osgood, an admissions director at the University of Puget Sound adds, “We want them to hone in on their personal goals…we don’t them to end up spending a year
watching reruns of bad tv shows.”

3. Quality not Quantity

“A deferral letter needn’t be five pages long, one page is completely sufficient,” says Tesone. Draft an email as you would a formal letter and use about 4-6 beefy paragraphs to describe your plans.

4. Things Change

“It’s ok if plans change, in fact we expect them to!” says Osgood. Most schools will not hold it against you if you decide to do something different than what you outlined in your letter. University of Puget Sound has Gap Year students check in the February before they start college to update them on how their plans evolved. Check with your school to see if they also require this step.

5. Adhere to deadlines

All colleges that offer a Gap Year deferral have a firm deadline that usually falls between May-July. While there doesn’t seem to be any benefit to rushing to get a deferral request in early, you do have to meet the deadline for consideration. Both Osgood and Tesone agree that they’ve seen significant benefits to students who have taken gap time. “We pretty much always grant deferrals if they meet our criteria and find that students who take meaningful time away arrive at Vassar as great students,” says Tesone.