The Palo Alto High School College and Career Center hosted its third annual gap year meeting on Tuesday in the English Resource Center, providing options for the increasing number of students considering to take a gap year after high school.
Representatives from gap year programs such as the National Outdoor Leadership School, City Year, the Student Conservation Association, Leap Year and the Council on International Educational Exchange spoke at the event, sharing both personal experiences and the logistics of planning a gap year.
Alice Erber, a college and career adviser at Paly and the organizer of the event, said that while 94 percent of Paly students go straight to college after completing high school–the rest either start working or take a gap year–the number of students taking gap years has increased in recent years because of an improved awareness about the programs offered.
“The number [of students taking gap years] is increasing because of our program at Paly and the local gap year fairs,” Erber said. “There’s been more in the media about it, so the vocabulary is heard more often. Some colleges even recommend a gap year.”
During the meeting, Sam Bull of Leap Now, a gap year program that offers more than 6,000 various options and provides students with college credit, attempted to redefine the term “gap year.”
“It’s not a time to take a gap in your education, it’s actually a chance to fill in the gaps in your education,” Bull said. “It’s a time to learn a lot more.”
Junior Manon von Kaenel said she is interested in taking a gap year because it would allow her to travel.
“It would give me a chance to travel and to do stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily be able to do after college or during college,” von Kaenel said.
Senior Margaret Ackroyd, who has participated in a five-week program with the SCA, said that she is considering a gap year because it would give her the opportunity to discover what her passion and life goals are.
“The gap year is a chance to pursue something that you think that you might be passionate about,” Ackroyd said. “You could either be proven right, that you are really driven in that direction, or you could be proven totally wrong, in which case you need to re-evaluate your life. College doesn’t really give you a chance to do that, since it’s just a hyper-advanced form of high school. ”
Ackroyd said that gap years are important because they allow students to understand both the world and themselves in a way unavailable at college.
“It’s a great way to be out in the world and understand what you can do in the world, because if you don’t understand what you can do in the world, then you’re just wasting your time and money at college,” Ackroyd said.
Students interested in taking a gap year are welcome to attend a fair on Feb. 27 at Los Altos High School and can visit the USA Gap Year Fairs’ Web site for more information.