<p>I am considering taking some time off before starting at GW. I got in ED1 and am excited about it and everyting, but I saw that they will let you put off starting by a semester or a whole year and still keep your admssion. I'm on the young side and love to travel, so I could take some time to get more on track age wise and work/travel. Thoughts?</p>
<p>The good thing about being young is that you still have time to do different things before settling in at college and in a career. If I had the means to take some time off before going to college I may have considered it. I'd been going to school since I was 4 years old and was sick of it. There is a lot of traveling that I would like to do but not having much money can limit one's options. I started college two weeks after graduating from high school in 2001 and I have been going to school non-stop with no vacations since. I did meet a few students over the past few years who recommended taking time off after you start college. One guy was in college for one or two years and then took a semester or year off to do whatever.</p>
<p>I think taking a year off to travel before starting college is a wonderful plan especially if your international experience up to this point has been limited. A year can be a long time however so its best to have an organized program. Europeans have been doing this for years as their calendar is different from the US system and they often use the gap year as the time to apply to college. The best gap years combine a few months of different activities or places like language study, internship, community service, volunteer work or adventure travel. The down side is that the cost of even low budget backpacking/youth hostel travel adds up. There are commercial groups that offer for a fee to structure your year off but they are also expensive. You have to be fairly motivated to do something worthwhile on your own, but if you are and do, it can be an enormously rewarding experience and a good foundation for academic study.</p>