President Barack Obama’s daughter Malia will take a year off after graduating high school in June before enrolling at Harvard University in 2017, a year later than had been widely expected, the president and his wife said in a long-awaited announcement Sunday.
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“Some students, if they are taking off time between high school and college, they’re doing so to work, to save money, to provide for their families, they’re not calling that a gap year, they’re calling that survival”, he said.
Malia Obama is all set to graduate high school with the class of 2016, and she’s made a decision to go to Harvard – in 2017.
The statement confirmed rumors that raged after Malia was photographed wearing a Harvard T-shirt at her Sidwell Friends School’s college signing day.
Put another way: The research on what happens to students after a gap year remains fairly thin, but so far it seems to indicate that the students who do take time off from their studies do not perform any worse than their peers who do not, and some may in fact do a little better, especially in terms of motivation.
Adelphi freshman admission director Stephanie Espina extolled the benefits of the gap year. Just what is it and what do students do during that year?
“For some students, they know if I don’t go straight into school now, I’m not likely to continue”, Wessel said. Still, I plan to encourage my boys to take some time after high school…I’ll just have to try and be right there making sure they take full advantage of the time.
A group called “Where There Be Dragons” offers worldwide gap year programs. “Parents worry their kids will take a permanent detour and skip college altogether”. According to Harvard, between 80 and 110 students defer enrollment annually.
Taking a “gap year” like this can be pricey, but there are ways to do it on the cheap, according to Bull. She cites as an example one student she helped to plan such a year, who served half the time as a counselor at a wilderness education program in the United States and the other half as an attendant at a fly fishing lodge in New Zealand, in exchange for room and board. “I’ve basically watched the trend grow from it’s inception in the U.S.”, she says. There are no official statistics kept on participation, but the American Gap Association found in surveys it conducted that about 30,000 to 40,000 students each year take advantage of the programme. “The distance usually gives a student perspective on who they are and what they want out of their life, and colleges will be more willing to admit a student with a less-than-perfect application if time has passed”. “Many speak of their year away as a “life-altering” experience or a ‘turning point, ‘ and most feel that its full value can never be measured and will pay dividends the rest of their lives”. But the White House has steadfastly refused to comment on her college deliberations, even last month when she accompanied Mr. Obama on a trip to California, prompting whispers that she was giving Stanford University a final look before committing herself there.
“There’re tons of people taking a gap year”, she said.
“Students go to college more satisfied and engaged and universities often see these students become leaders on campus”, Knight said.
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“Of our cohort at Global Citizen Year, of those who re-apply to college, 90 percent end up in more selective and better-matched schools”, she says.
