Defer vs Gap Year D26?

[sbinaz]

@Badge

What are the pitfalls of deferring for the schools above (would any merit hold) and would it be better to not register for any school and take a gap year and apply cleanly as a 27? Could she take classes for no credit at the local CC or U and still be a first year student for merit?

About the questions noted above:

• each college is different (so check directly with the specific colleges), but a common rule that a lot of them use is you can enter as a 1st year student/freshman after a gap year/deferral year ONLY if you take no more than 12 units/credits at another college. Usually if you take more than whatever that college’s max is, they then consider you a transfer student, and then you have to apply as a transfer student, and then any ‘incoming freshman’ merit scholarships awarded to you when you applied as a senior in high school are null and void.
• Whether or not any merit scholarship $$ awarded could also be deferred is something that your D26 should ask each college’s admissions office directly.
• IF your D26 decided to completely start over again apply again in the Fall 2027 application cycle, then you have to go through the whole thing again…all of the transcripts, letters of rec, etc. There’s a risk to doing that sometimes, especially if your D26 attends a high school with a large graduating class. Sometimes it can be harder to get help from the school counselor & your high school teachers once you’re no longer a high school student there.

If your D26 were my kid, I’d be advising her to do the following:

1. Contact each college’s admissions office via email & phone call, if necessary, to inquire about their deferred enrollment policy.
2. Ask specific questions in the initial email to them. Things like: (a) what documentation does the student have to submit when requesting the deferred enrollment; (b) do I first need to accept the admissions offer, pay the enrollment fee, and then I request a deferral to the following fall semester; and/or (c) during the deferral time period is there anything I cannot/should not do (such as ‘take no more than X # of college credits/units at another institution’).
3. Decide which of the schools you really want to attend. Enroll at one of them and defer your enrollment to the following fall.
4. If the deferred enrollment is due to medical reasons, when making your decision on which college to attend, consider whether you’ll need any medical accommodations while at college.
5. Also do some research to learn/try to figure out if some of the colleges on your list do a better job than others at handling students who need medical accommodations.