Time : Taking a "Gap Year"

Time Out

In what has become known as a 'gap year,' students take a temporary detour from college

By Jane Clifford

UNION-TRIBUNE FAMILY EDITOR
September 17, 2005

Carly Toyer tries to cram one more thing in her suitcase.
Finally, she gives up.

"Mom, I'm gonna need another suitcase."

"OK, I'll get you a bigger one," says Paula McColgan, pulling herself up off the floor just inside her daughter's bedroom door.

Gershwin's "An American in Paris" plays in the background as Carly talks about her impending move. Like many her age, the 18-year-old graduate of San Dieguito Academy is leaving home this fall for the next phase of her life. For most, that means beginning freshman year in college. For Carly and others, it means beginning a "gap year."

The term describes those who decide to put off college for a year. They are fully qualified to continue their education, often have been accepted at one or more schools, but defer their admission.
The "gap year" is a popular option in England, as is the "walkabout year" in Australia. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, the central organization that processes applications in the United Kingdom, reports that about 8 percent, or one in 12 students accepted, subsequently applied to defer their admission for a year.

There are no such numbers available on American students, but a 2003 poll by the Princeton Review, a provider of test preparation and college-admissions services, found "very few American students take time off, but the ones who do report getting better jobs and grades.

Little has changed since 2003. Barbara Elliott, director of enrollment management at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, says: "Each year we have several students who ask to defer admission, seldom more than 2 to 3 percent of our admitted class. Personally, I believe the concept of a 'gap year' is a good idea for those students who want to take time to travel, work and mature before they begin their higher education. And I suspect a good percentage of 'gap year' students use the time to gain the experience and perspective that will allow them to discern where their real interests lie."

That's exactly what motivated Carly to consider a "gap year."

"I definitely know that I want to further my education," she says, but she's unsure about where and what she wants to study.
"I decided to take a year off and learn about myself."

That won't mean living at home, hanging out, cruising the Internet. Carly is living in the Jackson Heights area of New York City, working with underprivileged children at schools and youth centers. She's sharing an apartment with three other young women who are part of City Year, an AmeriCorps program founded in 1988 by Michael Brown and Alan Khazei, then-roommates at Harvard Law School, who felt strongly that young people could be a powerful resource for addressing the country's most pressing issues.

City Year volunteers are ages 17 to 24 and sign up for a demanding year of full-time community service, leadership development and civic engagement. The program, which began as a 50-person summer pilot program, has sites in 14 cities where 1,000 young people mentor, tutor and teach children in partnership with public schools.

Monday, Carly wrote in her online journal:

"I am now a proud member of the Long Island City team, at PS 111, Queens! I love it – Our school is a few stops away from me on the subway (and) has the lowest literacy rate of all of the schools that City Year works in. The children are also very wild, and as a result, they do not have recess. Instead, they have clubs run by City Year. City Year will also run the after-school program called Starfish. All of this, of course, goes along with our roles as classroom aides and service project planners for the school and community. My goal for this year is to help my team to create and witness valuable change at PS 111. I think we can do it."

It's a very different view of life for a middle-class teenager from Encinitas, but one Carly was very excited about the day before she and her mom flew to New York.

An experienced actor at heart, and a singer in her soul, Carly loved the idea of living in New York. Combining that experience with helping others seemed perfect.
In fact, The Princeton Review poll found that "graduates of the gap year often describe their experience as 'life-altering,' and 'a turning point.' "

Michele Leiberman, who works in the Communications Office at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md., just featured a young woman in the school's magazine who is a freshman this year after completing her gap year.

"Thorne Rintel spent her first year post-high-school teaching students in South America and in Belize," Leiberman wrote. "She crawled out of bed while it was still dark in order to write detailed lesson plans. She spent long hours in an overcrowded three-room schoolhouse in Costa Rica, teaching six grades of students without knowing any Spanish.

"I had to really grow up fast," Rintel told Leiberman. "And it was just what I needed."

Rintel, a Maine native, said she didn't take her studies too seriously in high school and didn't feel she was mature enough for college when she was accepted to McDaniel's class of '08. With the encouragement of her mother, she decided to take a year to become more "worldly" and to step out of her comfort zone.

"For years, Harvard and other top colleges have encouraged their college-bound students to defer admission for a year while they explore various options," says Elliott, at The University of the Arts. "But for most students, the biggest hurdle they will face in making this decision is convincing their parents that it's a worthy idea."

Betsy Buckner acknowledges it took a little convincing for her to buy into her daughter Lindsay's idea to delay college.

Late last month, Lindsay stood in the middle of the family room in their Cardiff home, stuff spread out everywhere, as she finished packing for her gap program, which will be a 23-month mission trip to Africa and Southeast Asia.

She found it through her church, Solana Beach Presbyterian. Operation Mobilisation is a Christian organization that has more than 4,000 people from around the world working in more than 100 countries "to help plant and strengthen churches." Lindsay will serve on one of two of the organization's ships that travel the oceans to various ports.

She will share a stateroom with three other people, work six days a week and get one week off at Christmas. The group requires its volunteers to seek pledges from friends and family for financial support.

It is going to be quite a new lifestyle for this young woman, too, active in lacrosse, soccer and field hockey all through high school. That has not gone unnoticed by her two closest friends, Molly Wardell and Kerstin Mooneyhan, who had come to visit on Lindsay's last day home. They support Lindsay. They say they can't imagine making the same choice. The friends will stay in touch via e-mail, when Lindsay's in a port with access for her laptop. "I worry about being homesick," acknowledges Lindsay, "about getting burned out, about being in the same environment every day with the same people."

The youngest of two girls, Lindsay's used to her space, her privacy, things she won't have on the ship, and she'll miss her big black cat, Bubby, sitting regally on the stairs, watching Lindsay try to make last-minute decisions on what would make it into the 44 pounds of baggage she's allowed to take on the ship and what would be left behind.

Lindsay also says she will miss driving and Mexican food. She made a final trip to Rico's, a neighborhood place that makes her favorite burritos.

Lindsay's ship, now docked at her first port in Richards Bay, South Africa, will go to Mauritius, the Seychelles and Sri Lanka between now and January and dozens of other ports before she gets off in July 2007. At each stop, she says, people in the cities will have access to the largest floating library in the world. She will help get books into people's hands, work at cross-cultural understanding, provide relief services and be a witness to her faith.

"I had been thinking about taking a year off, and a friend's brother had done this program," Lindsay says. "I thought it was the best time to do it, while I'm not tied down."

She could have signed up for OM programs of shorter duration, but she really wanted to do the work on the ship.

"We had very mixed feelings," says Betsy Buckner, looking over at her husband, Doug. "We don't want to see her leave us for two years. We thought it would be better for her to go to college first. But we understand her motivation, and we've kind of come around."

Despite being a little worried and anticipating the vacuum that comes with being empty nesters now, both the Buckners and McColgan and her husband, Merl Toyer, are pleased with their daughters' decisions.

"It takes courage," Doug Buckner says. "I don't think I could have done this at 18."

McColgan, a believer in "giving back," is a little uneasy about her only child being so far away, but "her father and I could not be more proud if she were going to an Ivy League college," McColgan says.

The cost is significantly less, she says with a laugh, but a cost nonetheless. Carly found the program online, during the spring, as graduation loomed and she had no firm plans. She then found housing through e-mailing others in City Year's online community. She and her two roommates each pay $485 a month, plus utilities, and her parents are covering her share. The program pays her a $200-a-week stipend for living expenses. At the end of her volunteer year, she will receive a $5,000 grant for college.