Hey, I took a gap year (applied during the gap year this past cycle) and it worked out great for me-- feel free to PM if you’d like 
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Just an FYI, my and a few others we know personally got approved gap years at Berkeley. Mine was medically related, others I know were for religious reasons (travel and live in Israel), so it’s not easy, but they do allow for exceptions. Also - UC Davis in particular allows for deferred enrollment: Deferred Enrollment | UC Davis
Once you get approved, you have to submit a new application but are guaranteed admission. I would not have let my kid put off applying for a year unless he wasn’t sure he wanted to go to college. It would have been too stressful for me to have him try to do it on his gap year.
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When I think of a gap year, I don’t think of a deferral of enrollment. I think of taking a year after high school to do something different…and then applying for college admission during that gap year.
There are lots of good reasons for a gap year. Maybe the student didn’t get accepted to any colleges they really wanted to attend…so plan to apply again the next year. Maybe they want to do a service program, or travel or learn live abroad and master a foreign language. Maybe they have family concerns that necessitate taking a year off (sick relative, for example. Or finances that just can’t be reconciled yet).
Sure, there are also students who apply and ask to defer their enrollment for a year. Some colleges will do that, and others simply don’t allow that to happen.
Hmmm . . . well, I think of gap year/deferral as two sides of the same coin.
In my kid’s case, he was interested in taking a year off for a variety of reasons including medically related, but wasn’t positive he needed/wanted to and it was also dependent on where he got in. Most of the schools he applied to (medium to large private schools for engineering) allowed you to defer enrollment (take a gap year) and many actually encouraged it if that’s what you wanted. The UCs/Cal Poly’s were the wildcards. If Berkeley didn’t allow him to defer enrollment, he would have started in the fall and depending on how he did, might have ended up taking a semester off, although you do have to be in good standing to do so.
There was no question he was going to apply to college during fall of his senior year though, with his cohort. It was just easier to do it with everyone else, on the same time-line with the support of his school counselors. The idea was that he’d get in where he got in and would apply for a deferral once he got in. That way, he could just enjoy the gap year without having to apply and stress during that time.
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