How to help students plan a meaningful gap year

I remember giving a parent presentation on gap years in a previous school I worked at in Hong Kong. At the end of the presentation, I welcomed questions from the assembled audience of parents and caregivers. To my surprise, instead of a raft of curious questions, I was met with a sea of disapproving faces.

“I don’t want my son to be a year behind his classmates,” one mother said. “My daughter will need to catch up after she finishes her gap year,” was the way one concerned father phrased it.

I was perplexed and somewhat disappointed by these responses. These parents saw a gap year as something detrimental to their child’s growth and development, while my own personal experience was anything but.

An extended gap year: providing skills for life

I left school at the end of Year 12 (grade 11) with a handful of GCSEs and three mediocre AS levels under my belt.

Back then – and perhaps still now – that wasn’t enough to gain admission to any university in the UK. However, at that time I had already decided that education wasn’t for me (which was part of the reason I was asked to leave school in the first place), and I would be better placed doing other things.

I ended up taking up all manner of weird and wonderful jobs: working in my local cinema; temporary summer work as a pest-control officer for the local district council; working in a pub as a pot-washer; writing and editing articles for a musical-instruments magazine; and finally taking a giant leap of faith, getting on a plane and teaching English in Southern China for a year (after completing the most rudimentary of teaching qualifications: a two-day TEFL course in London).

Across three years, I picked up skills that, until that point, school had failed to teach me: time management, budgeting, linguistic and cultural fluency, how to interact with a wide range of people from various cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, the value of money, the value of friendships, and how to cultivate a professional image (which, admittedly, probably took me another decade to perfect).

The most profound moment of realisation came while I was in China. After a year of attempting to teach English to primary and middle-school children, I discovered that I was a terrible English teacher because I spent most of my time asking “How do you say this in Chinese” or “What does this character mean?” It was clear that my interests lay not in teaching English, but in learning Chinese.

So, I enrolled at the Xi’an Jiaotong University to study Mandarin Chinese full time. I stayed there for two years before transferring to SOAS University of London to complete a BA in Chinese (modern and classical).

Solving the higher-education crisis

Thus, my gap years actually led me to attend university. Without that time to explore and that space to uncover my passion, I wouldn’t have found anything worth studying, at least not in any meaningful sense. My drive and ambition came from the independence I was afforded during those gap years, and the study of a language became a fascinating and practical obsession: one I felt compelled to take to tertiary level as a result of my genuine interest and aptitude.

Years later, working in undergraduate admissions at Goldsmiths, University of London I was able to see the difference in maturity and life readiness between school leavers and those who had undertaken structured gap experiences.

Imagine my delight then, when I chanced upon a TEDx talk by gap-year coach Julia Rogers, entitled “The higher education crisis – and how the gap year could help solve it”. In it, she explores the challenges faced by universities and applicants, such as increasing competition to gain admission to university, increasing dropout rates, and the increasing unaffordability of tuition fees. She asked the pertinent question: “What do students need to thrive in this current system?” Her answer, she says, is “a little phrase with a million possibilities…a gap year”.

Meaningful gap years are intentional periods of time designated for exploration, personal growth, facing challenges, stepping outside of comfort zones and serving communities. Through this, students are able to develop skills, passions and aptitudes that the traditional classroom environment cannot provide.

Gap years can help to prepare students emotionally, practically, financially and even academically for university: a 2007 study from the University of Western Australia found that “Students who defer university [and take a gap year] are found to have higher marks than students who commence university directly after completing high school.” The research found that for academically low-performing male students, the academic advantage conferred by taking a gap year was even more pronounced.

How to deliver gap-year counselling

But, an amazing, enriching gap year doesn’t happen by accident. Counsellors need to approach gap-year advising with the same strategic approach they would use for university applications – perhaps even more so. The whole world is there to explore, including a huge plethora of opportunities for work, volunteering, service-based activities, travel and engaging in passions and hobbies.

Consider all possibilities

Fortunately, the Gap Year Association, a US nonprofit committed to advancing the gap-year movement, has got you covered: they have produced a planning guide PDF that is instrumental to considering all questions, all angles and all possibilities. It asks students if they want to:

• stay in their home country, or travel overseas?
• immerse themselves deeply in one place, or visit as many places as possible?
• stay in basic accommodation, somewhere more upmarket, or with a host family?
• learn a new language?
• apply to university in their final year of school, or during their gap year?
• travel solo or as part of a group?
• plan their own itinerary, use an accredited gap-year counsellor or go with a gap-year organisation?

Be aware of cost

As counsellors, one crucial thing to be aware of is the huge variance in the cost of a gap-year experience. Options range from earn-as-you-travel (working the Australian bar circuit has traditionally been a popular way of travelling and earning money for British students who want to see Australasia and surrounding regions), to pay-to-play companies like Outward Bound, which offer exciting gap-year expeditions for a (high) fee.

Many organisations cater to gap-year students by offering room and board in exchange for work, such as Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (popularly known as WWOOFing) and Habitat for Humanity, where students volunteer to build homes and community structures in developing regions across the world.

Here you can find a list of professional organisations and some suggestions for planning a structured gap-year experience, including other pay-to-play options for students with larger budgets.

Signpost, advise and share resources

Gap years are also part of the wider consideration around best fit, and it’s important to remember that what works for one student may not work for the next. However, I believe that the prospect of gap time should definitely be a core part of individual and family discussions when we’re advising on post-secondary pathway opportunities.

I have yet to meet a student who didn’t enjoy or benefit from their structured gap year, and go to university feeling better equipped for the challenges of student – and adult – life. With the right planning, it can be a transformational learning experience, filled with exciting, edifying and enriching moments, and heaps of personal growth.

Our job as counsellors is to signpost, to guide, to advise and to share resources. Because of my own journey, I sincerely hope that more students take the plunge and jump into a gap year (or years) and discover the world – and themselves – through the opportunities that arise.

And as Julia Rogers summarises in her TEDx talk: “Students who are empowered with their own sense of genuinely cultivated purpose are going to be happier and more successful in the long run.”