<p>Since Jeff Wong gave the official answer to your questions, I will digress a little and tell you my experience with a one year deferral. My son was accepted early to a top university (not Brandeis, but he is now a PhD student at Brandeis) and he came to my wife and I and said he would like to defer one year and go to Israel. After some discussion, we agreed as long as it was an “organized” program. We later came to learn that “organized program in Israel” is somewhat of an oxymoron, although in our case the result was very positive. </p>
<p>So my son enrolled in Young Judea’s Year Course. While it was more disorganized and loosely structured than I would have wished, the end results of deferring were very good. First, my son became reasonably fluent in Hebrew (he went to a day school through 8th grade and so had a decent background, but he certainly was not fluent). He worked for a number of months at a dairy on a kibbutz, which forced him to speak Hebrew outside of his Ulpan since very few Israelis who work in a dairy can speak much English. His improved language skills had far reaching consequences since he never considered himself strong in languages but this spurred him on to bigger things, and he later became reasonably fluent in Arabic as well. He is now truly multilingual. </p>
<p>Second, the experience of living in another country at age 18 was very beneficial. He actually had his own apartment for the last few months of the program and, by the end of the year, his level of self confidence and maturity had soared. Third, because the drinking age in Israel is 18—he could drink legally and therefore he and his friends bypassed much if not all of the irresponsible underage drinking behavior so prevalent on US college campuses. The bottom line is that he was much more prepared to start college after that year than he otherwise would have been. </p>
<p>Finally, his connection with and understanding of Israeli and Middle Eastern culture was immeasurably increased. While the academic portion of his program was not all that challenging, the educational benefit of living abroad made up for it. </p>
<p>So I recommend deferring so long as the student has firm plans to return and start college after the year. Also, I recommend checking out the program exhaustively. Based on my observations, most are pretty loosely structured by US standards. Good luck.</p>