If you’re talking to seniors about their plans after graduation, many are looking forward to UNC, N.C. State and other colleges. Others are going to leave schooling and work, serve in the military or volunteer. But there’s a third option for some students: taking a gap year between high school and college.
Gap years are becoming slightly more popular with students at East over time, according to counselor Jessica Harris in an e-mail to the ECHO. During a gap year, students often work, travel, volunteer and submit college applications, among other activities. According to Harris, five students decided to take a gap year last year; exact numbers are not known for this year, but the ECHO has counted more than five who have said that they are planning to take a gap year.
One East senior who has decided to take a gap year is William Owzar. During their gap year, they plan to travel, likely in Europe. Because they are aiming to go to college for vocal music, they also are preparing their audition materials and studying music theory.
“I don’t think that I was going to be prepared for college by the time I graduated,” Owzar said. “And I have a lot of things that I want to do before I go to college.”
However, other students have different reasons for taking gap years. Senior Zac Wohl was most of the way through his Common App, when he found that he didn’t have the time to both work on applying to colleges and maintaining his current grades. Consequently, he stopped working on college applications and began to look into gap year plans.
“I realized, if I couldn’t get good grades, I wouldn’t get into the colleges I really wanted to go to, so I decided to just take it slow. I don’t think I was really ready yet,” Wohl said.
Last year, Jenny Blass (Disclaimer: she is a former ECHO editor), who was then a student at East, first applied to colleges and then informed her college choice, the University of Michigan, that she would be taking a gap year. Blass, who describes herself as Modern Orthodox, wanted to learn more about Israel and improve her Hebrew on her gap year, but also was concerned that COVID would disrupt her first year at college.
Blass said that, in the Orthodox community where she grew up in the Northeast, “it’s pretty typical to do a gap year in the first place. I feel like it’s a little bit less radical than it is if you’re not in the Jewish community.”
Blass, Wohl and Owzar all found that many of the people around them were supportive of their decision to take a gap year. While Wohl said that he did not get any assistance from the school itself, he found the application process easy and so did not need any help. Owzar, however, had a more negative opinion toward the school’s involvement.
“Especially schools like this, they really drive home the fact that college is the only option or it’s failure,” Owzar said. “I feel like that’s the way they set a lot of us up to believe, and I think that’s a really backwards way of thinking because there are so many different options and college isn’t for everyone.”
Harris, however, wrote that counselors are here to help students with gap years. Although she said that students need to find gap year opportunities themselves, the counselors can assist with advice and details.
Blass did not ask the school for advice or assistance with her gap year program, in which she went to Israel in order to volunteer. In her program, which was roughly the equivalent of the Israeli sherut leumi, a program of volunteer service instead of military conscription, she assisted an endocrinology lab by sorting files and setting up the lab, among other tasks. Because much of the speech there was in Hebrew, she was also able to improve her speaking abilities.
Wohl is also doing a specific Jewish gap year program, but he is planning to do quite different activities. Wohl said that because he was concerned about perpetuating the “white savior” narrative through some gap year programs that involved going to foreign countries, he chose an American program. In his program, which is called Tivnu, he will go to Portland, Oregon in order to do charity work, mostly building affordable housing.
However, what makes a gap year different from leaving school permanently is the return to college. Neither Wohl nor Owzar have yet applied to any colleges, but both are planning to attend college after their gap year. Wohl, who described himself as “very excited to go to college,” is planning to double major in physics and math and is already looking at “big state schools” such as University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also pointed out that one disadvantage of taking a gap year was that he needed to keep his grades high at the end of senior year, unlike students already admitted to colleges.
Blass thought that her gap year “broadened my horizons. I learned a lot about Israel in particular. If there’s a target country that you want to learn more about, … a gap year can be a great way to do that.”
Harris also said that taking a gap year could be a good fit for many students, because it allows them to obtain work and have other experiences before going to college. However, she highlighted the importance for students of doing their research on the programs. Blass echoed that sentiment, calling for students to look into the financial side of gap year programs, which can be expensive.
“I think a gap year is a great plan,” Owzar said. “You just need to really plan it out beforehand.”
