Hi all, my DD got accepted into a Jewish gap year called Kivunim. It is a nice program and gives 30 college credits. She doesn’t know if she should accept one of her current college offers and ask for a deferral or reject all offers and try to transfer next year. Anybody with this kind of dillema here? The college credit will be in Jewish studies from Hebrew college in MA.
The first question is - is she happy with her college acceptances or does she want to rethink the whole application process?
You will need to consider what the rules are for gap years for any/all of the schools she is considering. Some will allow you to take courses, others may not. It’s possible that some/all of the credits won’t be accepted.
Personally, I would wait to have all college offers on the table, and when one emerges as the first choice, contact the school and ask to defer. It would be much harder to re-do the application process during a gap year, when they aren’t at high school to have help from the GC to send documents and such.
As to college credit, some schools will allow it, others won’t.
The schools will also decide if she will be considered a 1st year student or a transfer. If considered a transfer, she would not have the same financial aid package.
Thank you all for the valuable input. We will wait until all the offers arrive, but she already determined that at least one college she got into (Binghamton) accepts a full year of Kivunim credit. It is a public school and they don’t give much aid to out-of-state students anyway.
So, what questions she should be asking the school? Should she first accept their offer and then ask for a deferral? Or ask for a deferral first and accept after getting it?
My concern is still the question of whether or not the schools that accept her will consider her a transfer student?
I really don’t have an answer to this question. She got into one more school yesterday. I think we will ask when we visit.
I went to Binghamton and a ton of kids took a gap year in Israel before freshman year. It’s seriously such a common thing that people would ask each other “are you a freshman or an Israel freshman?” Probably about half my friends were a year older because they took that gap year in Israel. Binghamton will be used to dealing with this situation.
rebeccar, did your friends get credits for their programs? Or just received a deferral?
We will be visiting Binghamton in April and will ask them. So excited!