Should this year's high school juniors plan for applying DURING a gap year?

nomatter
Sun, 19 Apr 2020 17:07:19 +0000

Very few schools offer ‘automatic’ deferrals for admitted students who want to take a gap year. I’m pretty sure that the vast majority require the student to apply and be approved. So, colleges have a lot of control over whether or not the high school class of 2020 will be taking an en masse gap year. I think that a lot of parents of current HS Seniors are probably thinking about a gap year (the seniors, probably not so much), but realistically, I doubt that’ll happen using college/university formal deferrals. For those who take a gap year by way of simply not enrolling, and rolling the dice again on a fresh application/admission cycle, I think it’s going to be a gamble.

Students frequently can’t defer merit awards. A lot of merit-based scholarships have requirements that preclude students who take a gap year. There’s a growing expectation that pools of need-based and merit aid may get stretched very thin, at least through what already is or may become a deep recession.

With regard to what students could do during a gap year-- I don’t think that there is nearly enough data about Covid-19, nor accurate enough reporting (due to constraints in testing & reporting, complete data on infection rate and morbidity, data on transmission life and rate, or additional risk factors) to, with any real confidence, suggest that a healthy 18 year old with no known underlying conditions, are at little to no risk. We certainly know that they can transmit it, even without symptoms.

I’m not sure that I believe that current HS Juniors (rising seniors) are going to, in any way, be disadvantaged in the college admissions process. First, plenty of current Juniors will have already taken the SAT/ACT, at least once. Those who haven’t can benefit from expanded ‘Test Optional’ policies, or take it later. I certainly don’t think that HS Class of 2020 applicants are going to get a default advantage over HS Class of 2021. And, I don’t think that there will be enough of HS Class of 2020 in the freshman admit application class to appreciably burden the pool.

What I do think is that State Universities are going to see a general uptick in applications from students who might have otherwise applied to OOS and private universities.