Universities in Britain, Switzerland and increasingly the United States allow, and often encourage, a year between school and study. Done well, the year produces a nineteen-year-old who can hold a job, speak another language and look after themselves. Done badly, it produces a tan and a story about Bali. The plan is what separates the two, and the plan has to be made in the spring before the exams, not the September after.
Four quarters
The gap years that work tend to have four parts of roughly three months each.
- Work, for a stranger, for money. A chalet season, a restaurant kitchen, a sailing school, a farm, a small company that is not a friend of the family. The point is a boss who did not know the parents, a pay slip and the discovery that the working day is long. Three months is enough to learn it.
- A language, in the country. Twelve weeks in Salamanca, Florence, Lausanne or Berlin with a host family and a course produces a working language; three years of school French does not. Choose the language the child will use, not the one that sounds impressive.
- A skill or a qualification. A yachtmaster course, a ski instructor's licence, a wilderness first responder certificate, a sommelier course, a coding bootcamp, a term at an art school. Something with an examination at the end that the child cannot pass by charm.
- The journey. Now the travel, and preferably alone or with one friend, on a budget the child set and defends: a train across Europe, a bus through South America, a month in Japan. Not a private jet to a private island; that is not travel.
What it costs and who pays
A well-planned year costs 15,000 to 40,000 euros depending on the courses. The family pays for the courses and the language stay; the child pays for the travel from what the job earned. That division is not stinginess, it is the whole lesson, and it is why the working quarter comes first.
The university question
Deferred entry is straightforward at British and most European universities: apply in the final school year, accept the offer, defer by a year. American colleges usually grant a gap year on request after admission. Apply first, then take the year; a child applying from a beach with no school support and no references is at a disadvantage. The Admissions Timeline shows where the application year and the gap year meet.
What to avoid
Volunteering placements sold as charity that cost 5,000 euros a month and involve painting the same orphanage wall as last month's group. Internships arranged by a parent's friend in which the child is shown around and shown nothing. Twelve months at home with a plan to start something. And the year that drifts into a second year: the deferral has a date, and the date is the point.
The best test of a gap year is the dinner conversation the following Christmas. A child who talks about the head chef, the host mother in Salamanca and the night bus from Cusco has had one. A child who talks about the beach clubs has had a holiday, and it is not too late: the university years have summers.
