Gaps and Bridges: Malia and Harvard, Skills and Global Experience

Why would someone choose to take a gap year before college as opposed to after? Context: I took a year off after high school and had one of the most transformative and challenging 8 months of my life. I've encouraged others younger than me to consider something similar, but many rejected the idea, saying they'd reserved a gap year for after university.

I was asked to answer this question on the website Quora.com.

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First of all, I am a big fan of gap years. I have seen, as you have, that these experiences can be transformational. I say this having worked with students over many years and I say this because I observed this happen to my own daughter too. I have written about gap years a number of times.

In addition, last year a reporter for the Washington Post interviewed me about gap years. I won’t quote the whole article but will include these snippets:

“Parents have been chauffeurs and secretaries for their kids all their lives, so kids tend to have a rough adjustment period when they head off to college,” Muth says. “But taking a gap year is the antidote to helicopter parenting.”

“It’s an investment in the whole person,” Muth says, one that allows kids to develop the maturity, independence and self-reliance necessary to make the most of a college education. He speaks to the significant growth opportunities that a gap year can provide as well as the common freshman pitfalls it can help students sidestep. It can also give students the opportunity to take a step back to focus on their goals, leading to a stronger sense of direction once they’re back in the classroom.

Well, when you put it like that! Isn’t this exactly what we’re striving to give our kids—a sense of their place in the world and how to appreciate it and make the most of it?

“A gap year experience can also expose kids to the realities of the world that awaits them on the other side of college,” Muth continues, turning them into young adults who are more inclined to take their education seriously rather than as a “prepaid, four-year playland.” Plus, it gives kids a break from the intensive work—and parenting—that goes into completing high school and getting into college, making it less likely that kids will bottom out during their first year away from home.

This is starting to sound all too uncomfortably familiar to me: While I eventually graduated with a GPA respectable enough to earn me a spot on the Dean’s List, I cringe remembering how flagrantly I allowed myself to tank academically my first year in college, missing classes because I had stayed up until 6 a.m. (not a typo!) or rationalizing my absence because the professor would never know if I wasn’t one of the faces in the 300-seat lecture hall. I won’t even begin to go into the generalized stupidity I engaged in once I finally moved out from underneath my parents’ watchful eyes. I spent the next three years scrambling to make up for that.

This is a high cost not only academically for students like me, but also financially for parents who are shelling out an average of $23,410 for public schools or $46,272 for private schools each year, according to the College Board. The cost of supporting a student who’s taking a gap year is often significantly less, and when those students enter college the following year (and 90 percent do, according to a study conducted by Karl Haigler, author of The Gap-Year Advantage: Helping Your Child Benefit from Time Off Before or During College) they often do so “much hungrier to succeed and get off the treadmill,” as Muth puts it.

Siemon-Carome describes feeling burned out after 12 years in a classroom, but her parents agreed that if she applied and got accepted to college during her senior year of high school, she could defer her enrollment. “Knowing I was already accepted made it easier for me to enjoy my gap year,” she says.

Muth agrees this is a smart plan, pointing out that it’s more difficult to get the college-application momentum going again once you’ve been out of school for a year. This is also what he counseled his own daughter, Grace, to do when she was graduating from high school in 2011: After being accepted to U.Va.’s elite Echols Scholars program, Grace deferred her enrollment and spent a year volunteering and traveling in Europe, Africa and India.

As for the experience itself, Muth says that not only has it helped Grace get the most out of college, it’s also the “single most impactful growth experience” she’s had. “The ability to navigate foreign countries on her own, without parents or teachers to tell her what to do, was a skill she’d been building toward for years,” says Muth, but the true test of her grit and self-reliance came as she attempted to embark on the final leg of her gap year in India. “Grace was 18 years old, traveling in Africa by herself,” Muth recounts. “She went to board a plane that would take her to volunteer at Mother Teresa’s in India, and they wouldn’t let her on the plane because they said her inoculations weren’t up to date. So there she was, stranded in the middle of Africa with no one to take care of her or tell her what to do. She had to figure it out all on her own. That’s a tremendous skill to have,” says the proud dad.

This all sounds like a magical learning experience, how a little loosening up of the apron strings can bring your child all the important life skills that you’ve been wishing for them.  

If what I have said above does not convince you about the benefits of a gap year, then let me add the support of some others whose reputations far exceeds mine. Each of the three I will quote from underscores how a gap year can help secondary school students succeed both in college, and afterward in jobs.

Nicolas Kristoff, the well-known New York Times correspondent, has recently published a piece on why more in the US should take a gap year. He suggests that the name be changed to a “bridge” year and I agree with his logic about rebranding the experience. (Unfortunately, I think the gap year name is too entrenched to undergo a linguistic transformation any time soon.)  The word bridge implies a way to cross over something and I think the connotations are far more positive than the word gap. Parents, especially, worry that permitting and sponsoring a son or daughter to do a gap year is to open up the risk them deciding not pursue a college degree--the student who gets off the well-travelled road that goes directly from high school to college may not find a way back (Think London Metro—Mind the Gap). For Robert Frost and for many others, however, the less travelled road does make all the difference:

Given its known benefits, it’s time to rebrand the “gap year” as anything but a “gap.” When used intentionally, the year before college can be a bridge, a launch pad and a new rite of passage. It’s the students who find the courage to step off the treadmill – replacing textbooks with experience and achievement with exploration – who are best prepared for life after high school. And a growing number of colleges are taking notice.

Bill Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s undergraduate admissions dean, wrote a manifesto about the need for students to take time off before college. Rick Shaw, Stanford’s undergraduate admissions dean, now speaks about the value of non-linear paths and the learning and growth that come from risk taking and failure, as opposed to perfect records. Princeton, Tufts and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have recently developed “bridge year” programs that encourage – and pay for – students to spend a year immersed in the world before arriving on campus.

Growing evidence also shows that a structured “bridge year” can be a game-changer for low-income students by helping them develop the growth mindset and grit associated with college persistence and completion. Reflecting this, scholarships for students who have historically not had these opportunities are growing as well. For example, at Global Citizen Year, the organization I founded and lead, our goal is to find the highest potential students we can, regardless of their family’s ability to pay. Since 2010 we have disbursed over $6 million in financial aid with 80 percent of each year’s class receiving need-based financial aid. 

Kristoff addresses one issue that has long been observed about gap years—they are largely reserved for families that can afford to subsidize it. Increasingly, however, there are foundations (including Kristoff’s), that provide aid for low income students to pursue a gap year too. In addition, now that some high profile schools have come out and endorsed (and in some cases economically supported)  the value of gap years, perhaps more families will see the tangible benefits and encourage their sons and daughters to go out in the world.

It has been quite some time since Bill Fitzsimmons, the Harvard Admission Dean, wrote about gap years but his words still deserve to be read at this time

Perhaps the best way of all to get the full benefit of a “time-off” is to postpone entrance to college for a year. For nearly 40 years, Harvard has recommended this option, indeed proposing it in the letter of admission. Normally a total of about 80 to 110 students defer college until the next year. The results have been uniformly positive. 

At least one high profile student this year has heeded the advice of Fitzsimons. Maliha Obama has just announced she will be doing a gap year prior to her attending Harvard:

In deferring her start date until 2017, Malia, 17, is availing herself of the opportunity to take a “gap year,” a popular option for high school seniors who are seeking experiences outside the classroom — some in far-flung parts of the world — before they begin pursuing a degree. Harvard actively encourages admitted students to do so.

Perhaps Malia’s high profile decision will encourage others to follow her path. For those who want more pragmatic evidence about the positive effects of gap years, I will bring in my last “witness” before I make a brief closing statement to the jury of readers. Jeffrey Selingo, one of the most well-known current writers about college and education, has recently polished a new book:  There Is Life After College: What Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow. In it, he provides a great deal of data to support his overall thesis—students need to do far more than choose a major and graduate from college to have a good chance tat obtaining a job that will be both competitive to get and can lead to long term success. He too is a fan of gap years since those that do them develop the maturity and skills many students do not get during their four years in college.

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Taking a short break for a structured gap year has a positive impact on academic performance and doesn’t take students off track in getting their start in life, a big worry of parents I meet. Indeed, research has found that when gap-year students arrive on campus, they take their studies more seriously and don’t engage in risky behavior, such as alcohol abuse. For a gap year to have a significant impact on your success in college, and later in the working world, it needs to be a transformative event, quite distinct from anything you have experienced before. It should also be designed to help you acquire the skills and attributes that colleges and employers are looking for: maturity, confidence, problem solving, communication skills, and independence.
 You should consider one of three different approaches when structuring the year off: it needs to either yield meaningful work experience, academic preparation for college, or travel that opens up the horizon to the rest of the world.

Selingo, Jeffrey J. (2016-04-12). There Is Life After College: What Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow (Kindle Locations 1186-1190). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

The bubble that a structured education often provides can be one reason that many refer to college as “the best 4 years” of their lives. The experience is fun, full of friends and in the best cases, learning. Increasingly, however, a degree has not resulted in developing some of the skills employers now seek. Many who hire for competitive jobs, whether it be in tech or finance or almost anything else, look for graduates who are creative problem solves, who have a global outlook and who are risk takers who are not afraid to step way from the herd to develop confidence and independence.

A gap year will not automatically instill skills. There is a wise saying, “wherever you go, there you are.” Whether you are living in a small town in a rural part of Virginia or living for a year in a megacity across the globe you will still be you. You will however change as a result of the world you are in. Those who open themselves up to new world, both mental and literal, will change their mental and material landscape.  I have rarely ever heard a student say they regretted doing a gap year. For most, it is transformative.

I hope I have made the case, at this point, as to why doing a gap year before college is beneficial. The only other thing that I would add is that those who hope to do a gap year after graduating from college may have similar experience abroad but they, in almost all cases, cannot defer starting a job for a year. It will mean that there will also be a delay in finding a job until the gap year ends, as it is very difficult to interview for a job if the person is living abroad. A post college gap year still can be a transformative experience but I would still encourage them to do it prior to university (if there is any choice to do so).

Finally, on a personal note, I think I can say that had my daughter not done a gap year I do not think she would have pursued the major she chose (global development studies) and would not have applied for scholarship programs to continue her international experiences. She will begin her Fulbright scholarship in Malaysia starting in January.