Gap year between BA and Grad School?

katens
Sat, 11 Jan 2020 00:02:33 +0000

Hi, so I’m currently a highschool senior and I plan to double major in psychology and asian studies. My plan is to get my masters in psychology and hopefully my PhD if things work out. However, I want to teach english in Japan for at least 1-2 years in between as a way to travel a bit before I need to focus on my career. I’m also considering maybe doing 1 year in Korea or China (makes more money & free housing) and then 1 year in Japan.

I’ve researched a lot, so I know a lot about teaching abroad and that I should be able to manage paying towards my loans or deferring if necessary (of course interest accrues but I’d still pay the interest). I plan to budget reasonably and even if I defer set aside some each month as if I was paying them. My goal is keep under 40k on loans and plan to work part time and during the summer at a hair salon(I have a cosmetology license thru highschool).

So I basically just need some clarification on how applying to grad school works if you have a gap in between and how that works in terms of recommendations etc. Would I ask for recommendations before graduating?? Also how would paying off loans from my BA work with a gap year and then going to grad school?

Thanks for any information or advice, I appreciate it and sorry for the long post lol.