<p>Are we talking about taking a gap year vs. going to a community college or vocational school when you didn’t get into a preferred university? In that case, I think a gap year is only a good option for a high-stats student who has a good chance of getting merit aid, but just applied to the wrong cases for a variety of reasons. The gap year might give that student the opportunity reapply as a freshman the following year and have access to the best aid.</p>
<p>If we’re talking about gap years more generally when compared to the other options - well, first of all, it’s a false comparison because after a gap year(s) one can return to a four-year college or choose to go to a CC or vocational school. But putting that aside, the advantages all depend on the student and their family resources. A “gap year” is, in and of itself, an upper-middle-class concept - the idea is that the student will do something “enriching” during that gap year. The sons and daughters of the wealthy and almost-wealthy spend the time studying or volunteering abroad, or volunteering for Americorps while living at home, or trying to get an entrepreneurial endeavor off the ground. They do something that will make their application look better/more appealing to top colleges. That can be good if the student isn’t ready to go to college quite yet, and needs an extra year to mature, but still wants to go (or their parents want them to go) to a top college. If the student is CC- or votech-school bound anyway, there’s little point to this. Also, if the parents don’t have the resources to fund something enriching and appealing for junior to do during the year off, there’s also little point.</p>
<p>I don’t know what “grade forgiveness” is in terms of community colleges - any grad school you apply to will see all of your transcripts, so it’s not like you can mess up and it vanishes. The class sizes aren’t necessarily smaller - it depends on the size of the CC compared to the size of the college - and a student at a CC won’t necessarily have more free time than a student at a four-year; it just depends on the number of classes they’re taking. I see two main advantages to community colleges:</p>
<p>-The biggest is it’s far cheaper than a four year college, and they are everywhere. The vast majority of students - especially low-income or middle-class students - can commute to a community college within ~45 min of their family residence, and tuition can be a couple hundred dollars a credit hour. (My home state’s CC were $99/hour when I moved away.)
-The second is that it can be a lower-stakes environment for a mediocre or below-average student who really needs to get away from his/her high school in order to flourish. Some students do poorly in high school but really bloom in college, and the CC may be the entryway for them to really ramp up.</p>
<p>The biggest negative is that by far the majority of CC students never transfer to a four-year college. That could be simply because they never intended to - they were taking a few classes or just wanted the AA - but students who intend to transfer need to remain vigilant. They’re in an environment where the majority of their peers don’t want to, or won’t be able to, transfer as planned. Also, many CCs aren’t really places designed for the traditional-aged college student. There is an array of services at your average four-year elite college - your Swarthmores and Rhodes, and even your Rowans and UNC-Gs and Cal States - assuming that most of the students are 18-25 and living away from home for the first time, or at least commuting away from home for the first time in an unstructured environment. A CC can be more of the Wild West, so to speak, so students need to be really driven to find information for themselves about transferring and other policies.</p>
<p>As for vocational colleges, yeah the biggest advantages are that you learn a specific trade and that they’re cheaper than the four-year and sometimes even cheaper than the CC. They can, indeed, be really good options for the student who doesn’t want to continue to a four-year.</p>
<p>However, sometimes the things taught at votech colleges aren’t really in-demand. For example, a lot of vocational/technical schools are still offering pathways to LPN licensure when most hospitals prefer RNs and LPN roles are quickly vanishing. Another example - the vo/tech college nearest my hometown offers a two-year degree in accounting, but I can’t imagine what that would be useful for.</p>
<p>The other obvious disadvantage is that vocational/technical college grads (and AA holders) earn, on average, far less than bachelor’s degree holders. Of course the field matters as well as what you do with it, but your average welder or electrical line worker can’t hope to make as much over the trajectory of their career as your average middle management college grad. Sure, starting out they may make similar amounts, but studies show that college grads quickly pull away and make more. Also, more and more jobs that used to only require on-the-job training, technical training or an AA/AS are now requiring a bachelor’s (see the nurse example; lots of hospitals are preferring to hire BSNs instead of ASN educated RNs, even though their licensure is exactly the same!)</p>
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<p>I also want to address this, because I see it around the fora a lot.</p>
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<p>I see a lot of people advising HS seniors taking a gap year “Don’t take ANY classes!” with the threat that they will surely lose their freshman applicant status. That’s not true! The vast majority of colleges only consider a student a transfer applicant if they have a certain number of college-level credits taken after high school graduation. That number is usually 24-30 (which is about 8-10 courses), which is equivalent to about a full-time year of college. At some colleges, I’ve seen it be about 12-15, but I’ve never seen one less than that.</p>
<p>Of course every student should check what transfer status is at their target colleges to be 100% sure. But at the VAST majority of colleges, a student can take a few college classes - for enrichment, to keep up with math or languages, etc. - in their gap year and not be considered a transfer applicant.</p>