<p>I'm a high school senior and I'm considering taking a gap year, but I'm not sure yet. I was planning to decide during second semester, once the chaos of college apps is over, but I wanted to check if that's okay, or if I'll need to indicate in my application that I want to take a gap year?</p>
<p>What you’re asking isn’t clear. Typically people use “gap year” to refer to a year spent after HS graduation and before applying to college. They take this time to travel, to pursue ECs they hope will raise their chances at a selective college, to earn money, because they’re burned out on school, etc. On the other hand, “defer admission” means you’ve been accepted to a college but tell them you’d like to actually show up in the Fall one year later.</p>
<p>Are you really asking about deferring admission?</p>
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<p>Not in my experience. My daughter is taking a gap year. She’s doing exactly what the OP seems to be describing: she applied to colleges; she chose one from among the colleges where she was accepted; she got permission to defer her enrollment for a year. People do this all the time. Many organizations run year-long programs for young adults between high school and college; these programs refer to themselves as “gap year programs.” And all of the gap year programs that my family researched encourage students do apply to colleges during the 12th grade and then defer their enrollment. They all said it’s possible to apply to college during your gap year, but it’s much more complicated.</p>
<p>Discospider, to answer your question, you can decide next spring. When you’re deciding where to apply, ask colleges about their gap year policies. Most institutions will be supportive if you want to take a gap year. But when you ask, be sure to ask whether taking a gap year would affect any merit aid (sometimes it does) or special programs such as honors. The sequence goes like this: find and apply to colleges; get admitted; decide which college you want to attend; ask them to defer your enrollment for a year. They’ll say yes, of course, because you already asked them their policy for gap years, and if they were hostile to the idea, you wouldn’t have applied there.</p>
<p>At the college my daughter will be attending, she had months after the deposit was due to defer. I think the deadline was in July. But some places cap the number of freshmen who may defer, so you don’t want to dither around too much.</p>
<p>You probably need to be researching gap years around the same time you’re researching colleges.</p>
<p>@mikemac: I’d call that “deferring enrollment.” The admission part is all signed, sealed and delivered by then.</p>
<p>@sikorsky: “deferred enrollment” might be a more descriptive term, but in the college literature it is often called “deferred admission”. See, for example, the Common Data Set that all colleges fill out, section C18 <a href=“http://www.commondataset.org/docs/2010-2011/CDS2010_2011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.commondataset.org/docs/2010-2011/CDS2010_2011.pdf</a></p>
<p>But no sense quibbling over words, and the OP should take a careful look at what you wrote.</p>
<p>Sikorsky, thanks for the reply! You told me basically exactly what I needed to know. I have one more question: I just looked at the Common App for the first time, and there’s a section in the Common App that says “If your progression through secondary school was or will be delayed or interrupted in any way, please check all that apply” and one of the options is “did/will take gap year.” It’s optional, so should I just not put anything?</p>
<p>And this isn’t really so important, but can’t I say gap year? Yes, I’m going to defer admission/enrollment, but I’m doing so in order to take a gap year. But like mikemac said, there’s not really any point in getting into a big debate about it.</p>
<p>Ah, but discospider, your gap year (if you don’t call it that, I don’t know what you are going to call it) isn’t going to interrupt your secondary education. It’s going to come after your secondary education.</p>