If a student wants to take a gap year, he or she can rest easy that they can go in several directions to find something that will fit their own preferences. Many ivory tower schools now accept the concept of the gap year, while others even promote it. And in fact, some colleges and universities promote it so actively that they have set up programs for their own for students to participate in, before getting busy with their main studies.

Universities that either accept or even encourage taking a gap year are multiplying in the United States. Harvard University might even be called an old hand at this, since for 35 years they’re been sending acceptance letters to applicants suggesting that they might want to defer for a year, to give themselves a breather after high school. And Yale, another grizzled veteran of the gap year, has always allowed a student to take the extra year. It just doesn’t actively suggest it the way Harvard does.

Franklin & Marshall College of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, outdo Harvard and Yale one better, though. Reasoning that a student really needs a few months to transition out of the high school mentality and into the more adult world of college, this school started a “January Program” that allows these young people to defer starting their first semester courses. Instead, they can choose to participate in school-sponsored programs, like a course of study in Italy, or learning mountaineering. Princeton University is another of the schools with the same idea, using its “Bridge Program” to allow students to engage in community service work in other countries for a year.

Even at the high school level, the gap year concept is being promoted. For example, the Los Angeles college preparatory school, Harvard-Westlake, has hosted “gap year fairs,” where representatives from various programs present the available opportunities to students. Other public learning institutes are beginning to follow suit.

If a student wants to take a gap year and have a break, then he or she can go in several possible directions. The young person might choose the fairly unstructured way of just living at home and having a job for a year. Or there’s the more fancy free youth travel option, with a backpack. But if they’d still like a bit of structure and supervision, then they may want to see if their own schools have gap year work programs, and get the best of both worlds.

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