Harvard Graduate School of Education

A Gap Year: How to Choose the Right Program

Holly Bull, president of Interim, an independent gap year counseling service, joins us today to talk more about the value of a gap year and how to choose the right program. Join her here for more information about cost, safety and outcomes, including resources for further research. 

I took two gap years -- one before and one during college. So I am, admittedly, biased in favor of taking gap time. And for the past twenty-three years, I have counseled over a thousand students through the gap-year process at the Center for Interim Programs. From a personal and professional vantage point, I am convinced that the gap-year option needs to be woven more universally into the formal educational process.

When Interim was founded in 1980, it was the first gap-year counseling organization of its kind and there was very little awareness of the gap year or much support for it as an option. In the United Kingdom, on the other hand, it was in full swing and it has been gratifying to witness what started as a novel idea for Americans become a trend and now a solid movement over the past thirty-three years. We are at a point where many colleges are recognizing that gap-year students are highly desirable to have on campus given their maturity, focus, and leadership skills. And future employers value the practical job skills these students already have in place.

Charlene Aguilar, Lakeside School

Charlene Aguilar is Director of College Counseling at Lakeside School, an independent day school for grades 5 through 12 in Seattle, Washington.  A graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara and Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, Aguilar has worked both sides of the desk in college admissions during her career.  She began as an admissions counselor at her alma mater in Santa Barbara and served as Associate Director of Undergraduate Admission at Stanford and Director of Undergraduate Admissions at Santa Clara University.  For ten years prior to coming to Lakeside, she was Director of College Counseling and Dean of the junior class at Castilleja School, an all-girls independent school in Palo Alto, California.