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Important questions hover around the concept of taking a gap year between high school and some kind of post-secondary study. What kind of students actually take this year off? Are these young people just lazy slobs hoping to put off becoming responsible adults for another year, as some believe? Or is there something else going on in their lives that makes them want to take a year’s deferral before starting their higher education?

The answers, of course, are as varied as the young learners themselves. But one answer is that they are often simply burned out. For twelve long years of public school, their entire childhood, in fact, they and their mothers and fathers have probably been focused on them getting good grades and being accepted at an excellent school. But Jim Bock, Dean of Admissions at Swarthmore College, said in 2008 that he thinks this single-minded focus on creating the right image and grades, even during the summers between terms, is part of what has led to student burn out and the popularity of the gap year. As Bock put it, “Summers have disappeared completely…so I actually think the gap year may be the new summer.”

Ironically, it may be the case that the big push for the students to succeed at getting excellent grades and being accepted into a good school is exactly the thing that has prompted an increasing number of these young people to take a gap year. They have spent their childhood and early adolescence with very adult preoccupations about success, often at the instigation of parents who might have pushed them too hard. They may need time to replenish their mental energies before going on with their educational pursuits.

Whatever the case, many elite schools have now recognized that burn out among students is a serious problem. For example, Harvard actually recommends to its accepted applicants, right in the acceptance letter, that they consider deferring their attendance for a year so they can start refreshed when they do arrive at school. Yale happily allows its own successful applicants to take a year off. And Princeton has even started a “Bridge Year” program to send freshmen out on service trips.

Undoubtedly there are some students who want to take a year off because they don’t feel like getting serious and just want to goof around. But even among these, the impulse might not be from laziness, but simply from the need to rejuvenate. For others, the issue is independence and the chance to stand on their own two feet before starting on their degree. Often, by taking the time to do some traveling or engage in gap year work, they return home as mature and responsible people, now ready to live in the world as functional adults.

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The gap year can be simple and easy, or as challenging as a student wants it to be. If they want a year away from their regular program at the university where they’ve been accepted, it may ease their mind to know that there are many schools of higher learning that are perfectly willing to allow them to defer their attendance for a year. They’ll also be glad to know that if they want to go abroad, then they will go with not just with the school’s blessing but also under the auspices of their chosen university or college, as some institutions allow and promote that as well.

Universities that either accept or even encourage taking a gap year are multiplying in the United States. Harvard University might even be called an old hand at this, since for 35 years they’re been sending acceptance letters to applicants suggesting that they might want to defer for a year, to give themselves a breather after high school. And Yale, another grizzled veteran of the gap year, has always allowed a student to take the extra year. It just doesn’t actively suggest it the way Harvard does.

Franklin & Marshall College of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, outdo Harvard and Yale one better, though. Reasoning that a student really needs a few months to transition out of the high school mentality and into the more adult world of college, this school started a “January Program” that allows these young people to defer starting their first semester courses. Instead, they can choose to participate in school-sponsored programs, like a course of study in Italy, or learning mountaineering. Princeton University is another of the schools with the same idea, using its “Bridge Program” to allow students to engage in community service work in other countries for a year.

Even at the high school level, the gap year concept is being promoted. For example, the Los Angeles college preparatory school, Harvard-Westlake, has hosted “gap year fairs,” where representatives from various programs present the available opportunities to students. Other public learning institutes are beginning to follow suit.

The choices available to the gap year student are myriad. If they want to stay home and simply work for a year, they can do that. If they’d prefer to be more adventurous, donning their backpack and engaging in a little travel, then that is also an option. But if they want to stay in touch with their college or university, doing something different but with a bit of supervision, then they’ll be glad of the fact that many of these schools will actually sponsor and help plan their gap year work initiative.

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