You seem to keep missing my point, so I’ll drop the exchange. Bottom line if he takes a gap year he needs to figure out something useful he can do for his application that falls within the terms of his current visa status. Please don’t make the mistake of assuming that just because an internship is unpaid it is allowed on all visa statuses. That is an incorrect assumption. (More specifically, an unpaid internship that can convert to a paid one definitely violates the rules of what is permissible without work authorization.)