There are threads elsewhere that address the gap year question but I thought a discussion about MIT specifically was warranted. You can learn engineering from just about any engineering school but MIT and other highly ranked colleges are different. It is the personal interaction between other students and professors of high intellect that sets them apart. That interaction will be, at best, significantly reduced it seems to me. I believe that it reduces the value of an MIT education.
The question then becomes what do you do during a gap year and will waiting a year make the MIT educational experience become more normal, and therefore worth it?