<p>'Gap</a> year' before college gives grads valuable life experience - USATODAY.com</p>
<p>Our son took a gap year between undergraduate and graduate school (this was when he was younger than most graduate from high school) and it seemed like a good thing for him, even though having no gap would probably have also been fine as it turned out (we just weren’t sure at the time he’d have had to apply to graduate school in his senior year of college whether he’d be mature enough to live on his own at age 13 or even 14, so asked him to take a gap year). He traveled to some new countries (think he had visited around 30 before he moved to graduate school), had a second business (computer consulting - it allowed him to make decent money while working relatively few hours a week most weeks), and in general, just enjoyed himself. The graduate program decision makers seemed to find the foreign travel and work experience helpful in assessing that he was ready to undertake the program (living on his own, traveling for business as he had experience doing that already, etc.). And perhaps the best thing was that our son knew should he not find graduate school to be what he hoped, he could go back to running his own consulting business (or perhaps some other business). Some students worry about what they will do once they are out of school due to not having been in the work force in “a real job” (in quotes as any job is a real job, really) and so a year of working helps there.</p>