Long story short, I am an international who became a foreign exchange student right after I finished 11th grade. The condition was that I will be a senior in my American high school however, I won’t graduate from it and would have to return back home and finish 12th grade here in my home country. Now I am a 12th grader(again). So it’s like I have 2 senior years, one in the US and one at home. Does the year spent in the US count as a gap year ? If not, then what it is? What should I put in my application?
The traditional time for a gap year is in between high school and starting college, or in between college and starting graduate school. This is why it is called a gap- putting the space in between two different phases of schooling.
What you have is 5 years of high school- one of them as a foreign exchange student. There is a place on the Common Application which asks about any interruptions in the course of high school, and a place for you to explain what that interruption is. I think your year abroad would fit there, since you are interrupting your course of study in your country.
I am not an admissions counselor or a school official. There may be other posters with different opinions about how to describe your experience and if so I hope they post here. I think the most important thing is for the college to be informed about what you did, regardless of how it is called.
Precisely. The terminology doesn’t matter; what does matter is providing a clear account of how you spent your “two senior years” and why you had to do so.
This is a reasonably normal situation, as many countries outside the US effectively have a “13th grade” or pre-college year at the end of high school, with the ensuing undergraduate degree programs lasting only three years instead of four. Or they may define the requirements of a senior year differently than the US does for other reasons.
Most admissions offices will have someone on staff who is aware of these situations, but since you can’t guarantee that your first reader will be one of those someones, it will be best to clearly explain the circumstances.