Gap Year News Articles

Gap Years Taking Off In USA

26 September 2011

Awareness of the benfits of taking a Gap Year is growing in the USA as number of students taking a year out has grown.

One of the lectures at the National Association of College Counsellors conference last weekend was entitled "Gap Year: American Style". This lecture was designed to examine the implications of a student taking a gap year, and for college consellors to formulate best practices when presenting gap year options to students and parents.

Mr. Clagett, a former addmissions officer at Harvard, has been compiling data on the performance of gap year students. He has found at one college the average GPA of students who took a year out was consistantly higher.

Speaking about when a student starts college he said "There can be this feeling of "now what?" And that can lead to lower achievement, to lower self-esteem. Gap programmes nip that in the bud."

Source: The New York Times