Gap year opportunities?

Parents Social Lounge
1

<p>We have not come to this bridge yet, let alone crossed it, so we are wondering, depending on his college acceptance outcomes, if our son should take a gap year and what acceptable opportunities are out there for students who might defer their college career for a year? I am familiar with Americorp and The Peace Corp of course, and I have seen a few quite expensive "experiences abroad". Are there others anyone is familiar with?</p>

2

<p>I am not sure about Americorp, but the Peace Corp requires a BA/BS at a minimum (I was in the Peace Corp in Thailand, after my undergrad, and it is competitive).</p>

3

<p>My best friend is in Thailand on a gap year with the Rotary Club. I know there are other organizations that do gap years abroad as well, so that could be an option.</p>

4

<p>Youth for Understanding offers some nice structured gap year abroad programs that focus on education. (The “traditional” programs in Europe may be too much like doing high school senior year again in another country, though. I would think a year in Ghana or India would be sufficiently different from HS.)</p>

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5

<p>A PG year at a prep school if the idea is to become a stronger applicant.</p>

6

<p>Have you figured out how to use those handy-dandy Search buttons, at the top of the page, to bring up prior threads on a topic of interest? </p>

<p>I ran it for you now. I limited my search to just those within the past year, with gap year in the title, yet got 3 pages of thread titles about gap years. </p>

<p>Of course, it’s always good to hear new ideas as well, as new opportunities and new posters are always coming on board. So others are heartily welcomed to post on your thread here.</p>

<p>New info on your thread will add to CC’s archived info: </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/search.php?searchid=14617524[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/search.php?searchid=14617524&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

7

<p>^^^
thanks</p>

<p>except when I run the same search I get all threads with the word gap OR year in them and there are pages and pages to sort through to find the ones that actually have info about gap years in them. What am I doing wrong???
And your link comes up as “no matches” ???</p>

8

<h1>theorymom,</h1>

<p>I’m sorry I ran away!</p>

<p>Checking back, I see I did you wrong by posting a link that didn’t work. I should have tested it; I’m sorry.</p>

<p>Try this one:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/search.php?searchid=14624384[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/search.php?searchid=14624384&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Also, let me explain what I did after I clicked on “Search” (top CENTER of this page, where it just says one word: “Search”).</p>

<p>Basically, I did many things to request a narrower search, as follows:</p>

<p>There’s a bubble to choose whether you want all displayed as “posts” or as “threads.” Choose “threads.”</p>

<p>Where it says Search by Keyword, type this: **gap+year<a href=“don’t%20type%20this:%20%20gap%20year”>/b</a>
The plus sign means it has to have both words, not just one. </p>

<p>Change “search entire posts” by a dropdown menu to say instead: “Search titles only”</p>

<p>(lower down, under “search options”):
WHere it says “find posts from any date” – change that to “Find Posts from a Year Ago”</p>

<p>Sort Results by “Title” (use drop-down menu to change that)</p>

<p>Show results as “Threads”</p>

<p>Search in Forum(s): manipulate the dropdown menu to blue-highlight the words “Parent Forum” </p>

<p>THE KEY THINGS to narrow this search were: using the plus sign between the words gap and year; typing in “a year ago” (that changed it from l00 pages to more like 3 pages), and identifying the forum (Parents Forum) so I wasn’t reading every university. But you can play around with it. For example, you might prefer to read more than a year’s worth of threads. There are many choices in those drop-down menus, all before you hit the actual search button.</p>

<p>I hope that helps.</p>

9

<p>I have wondered about the possibilities of a Gap Year myself for D#3, if she is not happy about her acceptances & financial aid packages. However, I hesitate to encourage this as it looks like our health insurance may terminate coverage for a dependent over 19 years of age who is not a student. As health insurance is so important (better to be safe than sorry) and many students seem to take a Gap Year, what do parents do about the health insurance issue for a Gap Year? It seems like a big factor in considering a Gap Year.</p>

10

<p>Some gap year programs will qualify as educational or they have health insurance options available.Others won’t. There is no general answer and you are right to look ahead to this problem. My concern though is more the idea of taking a gap year “if she is not happy with her acceptances and financial aid packages”. I think a gap year really only works well if it is an intentional plan to take a year out before returning to an established plan (eg: deferring an admission and then returning to that school). The child/young adult needs to have some individual initiative and take some leadership in the plan for it to be valuable developmentally. If the year is really about working and setting career goals or working and applying again with better definition—then it is good to call it that; it is not a “gap” in a planned trajectory–it is a crossroads where you are asking the kid to be an adult now and think about where they want to go. It needs to have a goal the youth really wants and has some accountability for, otherwise it is just an adult subsidized waiting period with management challenges.</p>

11

<p>Well, she has been so wishy washy about the whole process & dragging out this whole application procedure, I could almost see her deferring for a year & doing something meaningful, if that was what she wanted to do. Many of her friends are not applying at all and doing a Gap Year or taking the year off to work. I think a lot of it has to do with the economic climate as well. Peer pressure being what it is, I think it is just hard for D to get motivated & complete the applications when so many friends just aren’t applying.</p>

12

<p>Kids attitiudes can also change a lot in the next few months, especially when friends start making decisions and plans. I think the main thing, if you support waiting awhile for any reason, is that you let her know you support it (if you really do) and what your expectations would be (eg: minimum she would earn toward rent/health insurance/expenses/college fund or minimum standards for a volunteer program) and then let it truly be her project; otherwise you will be back micro-managing and she can wishy-washy away. Actually a year of working can be SO educational!</p>