“It’s odd being back in a classroom, but I know I belong in college now,” College freshman Jonathan Walsh said.
Walsh, one of approximately 60 Penn freshmen who took a gap year between high school and college last year, added that although he enjoyed his experience, it’s “nice to have structure back.”
Since he would have been 17 years old for the first week of school if he had matriculated last fall, Walsh took a gap year to “mature.” He decided to travel and take a “grunt work” job at the Jakarta Globe in Indonesia. Walsh entered Penn feeling more experienced, prepared and better at time management.
“When you live alone in the third world, you learn responsibility,” he said. “Moving into a dorm seemed incredibly easy.”
Gaps years “broaden perspective,” Dean of Admissions Eric Furda said, which is why Penn Admissions makes the process of deferring for a year very simple.
“I just wrote the Dean [of Admissions] a letter, and he wrote back telling me to go ahead,” Wharton sophomore Amelia Wilson said. “He only asked that I send him a letter midway through my gap year with an update.”
Since the number of requests hasn’t changed dramatically in the last five years, these students are factored into admissions projections in advance, and therefore do not affect waitlist numbers. Unless these numbers “swung much higher or much lower than expected,” Furda plans to continue accepting most applications to defer.
Once students are given permission, they take full advantage of 15 months without formal education.
Annually, about 40 to 45 of the students who take gap years spend their time in Israel, according to Furda.
Of his 180 person graduating class at the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto, College sophomore Jacob Shiff was one of 31 who delayed matriculation at their respective universities.
Different people go to Israel for different reasons, according to Shiff. He went to “find a stronger Jewish identity” by traveling and taking classes.
Looking for another sort of experience, Wilson, who worked for one of AmeriCorps’ City Year programs in Los Angeles, took a break from formal academics before entering the “very focused and preprofessional” Wharton environment. During her 10 months of service, she taught young students of varying backgrounds about civics and social issues.
“My year off changed my outlook of the world,” she said. “I loved what I did, but we worked long hours. I realized that I couldn’t do something that I wasn’t passionate about, like maximize share-holder profits for 60 to 80 hours a week.”
Her reaction is in line with what Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Dennis DeTurck values most about a year off — a “more sophisticated world view.”
College freshman Catalina Ramos took last year off to learn Arabic in Egypt with a program associated with the U.S. Department of State. She reported, like several others, that taking a gap year not only changed her view of the world, but also altered her idea of learning.
College freshman Michael Lautman, who took classes at the New York Film Academy, earned a certification in ski instruction and lived in China for six months, ended his journey with a similar conclusion.
“Coming back, it was a lot easier to see the value and purpose of spending 12 hours studying in Van Pelt,” he said.
Like Walsh, some students choose to defer matriculation due to young age.
College and Wharton sophomore Julia Dworkin, who was only 17 when she came to Penn, wishes she had considered taking a gap year. Coming from a small private school in New York City, Dworkin felt like she had lived “in a bubble,” and was overwhelmed by everything new she was exposed to at Penn.
“Having a worldly experience before college definitely would have helped me mature,” she said. “I think I would have been much more prepared.”
