'Gap year' options span the globe

Kari Olk did well in her four years at Southwest High School. She jumped into everything from ice hockey to theater, graduated and was accepted to college, as she had always planned. But you won't find her on a campus this fall.

Instead, Olk is headed to France in September and Tanzania in the spring. She's taking a year off before she enters college.

She's not alone. Olk is among the college-bound students who delay school for what's known as a "gap year."

According to Olk and others, it's anything but a year off. Most gap-year students study abroad in special exchange programs, take full-time jobs or do volunteer work.

College counselor Phil Trout said he typically sees about 10 students from Minnetonka High School's graduating classes of 750 take a gap year. Most have already been accepted to college and are deferring their enrollment.

"There's the obvious sense of adventure," he said. "And a gap year is a more scripted opportunity for students to do something else before they do what they think they've been doing all along, which is studying."

Some of the gappers say they put off college a year to save for tuition, especially in a sagging economy. But most are trying to expand their horizons while they're still young. Olk hopes that traveling now will feed her curiosity about the world and build her confidence.

World citizens

Olk will be living with the family of a friend in France, brushing up on her French while teaching English to the family's children. Her trip to Tanzania is with a program called Quest Overseas, a British-based company that bills itself as gap-year specialists. (Gap years are more common in Europe than in the United States.)

"Some students just aren't ready yet to jump into the college experience," said Neil Routman, communications specialist for Youth for Understanding, a nonprofit international educational group that places students in host homes. "Sometimes they're burned out after high school and want some time to regenerate."

A few colleges, including Harvard, actually encourage students to take a year off before entering college. An article co-authored by two members of Harvard's admissions office in 2000 said that time away from school can make some candidates better prepared and more desirable to colleges. The article went on to say that some students had been admitted, in part, because they had accomplished something of unusual merit in a gap year.

Programs such as Rotary Youth Exchange and Youth for Understanding cater to gap-year students who are looking to travel. Many of the organized programs offer students classes during their year away, often a fifth year of high school in foreign countries. But their experiences outside the classroom are just as valuable, said Routman.

Coming home

Not all gap years are spent abroad. Plenty of students take a year off and stay closer to home. Some spend a year working to raise money for tuition, but others try to get real- world experience. Fine arts students might spend a year acting or studying under a musician. Even hockey players who spend a year playing juniors to attract college recruiters are taking their own form of a gap year.

Andrew Rasmussen, 23, now a student at Minnesota State University, Mankato, took a different path. Rasmussen said he "floated through life" during high school, and didn't apply himself. With no one pushing him to go to college, Rasmussen graduated from White Bear Lake High School in 2005 without having taken any entrance exams. He went to live with his father in California, where he took on a series of odd jobs. He worked at Starbucks, spent some time as a traveling salesman and detailed cars.

After a year in California, he returned to Minnesota and started working toward being accepted to college.

"I decided that I didn't want to work as a barista for the rest of my life, so I had to go back to school," Rasmussen said. "I saw what I was doing without a college degree and really appreciated it in a way I don't think I would have been able to otherwise. I was eager to learn, as corny as that sounds."