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Breaking up the “Cradle to College” Cycle
Princeton University created a program to send a tenth or more of newly admitted students to the U.S. university for a year of social service work in a foreign country before they set foot on the campus as freshmen.
Princetons president, Shirley Tilghman, said in an interview that such a program would give students a more international perspective, add to their maturity and give them a break from academic pressures. She called it a year of “cleansing the palate of high school, giving them a year to regroup.”
“People are too young when they start college,” said Allan Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education. “This way, they would have a year to mature, and they can do something constructive.”
Gillian Tett
英国《金融时报》专栏作家
Twentyfive years ago, I embarked on an intense journey in Pakistan. I had just finished school in Britain, and decided to take a gap year before university, volunteering on an aid project. So I travelled to a remote corner of the Sindh desert, where I worked with a churchlinked medical group, before spending time in the northwest of Pakistan, working with children.
25年前，我在巴基斯坦踏上了一段紧张的旅程。那时我刚刚在英国中学毕业，决定在上大学前体验一次“间隔年”（gap year)，为一个援助项目进行志愿者服务。所以我前往巴基斯坦信德省沙漠里的一处穷乡僻壤，与一家和教会有联系的医疗队一起工作，之后又花了一些时间在巴基斯坦西北部帮助当地儿童。
It was—unsurprisingly—a transforming experience, which taught me much about the fragility and value of life.
毫不意外，那是一段转变人生的经历。关于生命的脆弱和人生的价值，这段经历教会了我许多。
Robert Clagett
A former dean of admissions at Middlebury College and former senior admissions officer at Harvard College
As the number of students who opt to take a gap year has grown, so, too, has awareness of gap year benefits to the student, said Robert Clagett.
Mr. Clagett said he is compiling data from institutions across the country on gap year student performance once they matriculate, and he cited Middleburys own statistics of recent years.
The data demonstrated that average G.P.A. for Middlebury students who took a break—35 people this year—was consistently higher than that of those who did not. （He noted that selfselection could be partly at play, that gap year students are typically more affluent and may have some different, unifying qualities.)
Mr. Clagetts motivation in studying the significance of a gap year is to “disabuse the parents out there of the idea that taking a year off is going to somehow mean disaster for their kids.” He added, “I think the opposite is true.”
One audience member cited his sons interest in “riding a motorcycle around South America like Che Guevara,” asking after the value of “individual meandering” over a formalized program.
“From a colleges point of view it really doesnt matter,” Mr. Clagett said. “They can stay home and eat bonbons if they want.”
Gap time—regardless of what one does—combats the “let down” a student feels once arriving on campus, Mr. Clagett said. “There can be this feeling of ‘now what?’ And that can lead to lower achievement, to lower selfesteem. Gap programs nip that in the bud.”
A gap year does not have to be expensive, Linda Connelly, a posthigh school counselor at New Trier High School in Illinois, said. She cited one student who stayed local for six months, working in a deli and taking a course in Chinese. For the following six months, he volunteered in Asia, having financed his trip there.
The student broadened his perspective on the world, she said, uncovering his passion for the East. “And he learned he never wanted to work in a deli again,” she said, laughing.
Beyond personal exploration, gap year students are also advantaged in the job market later on, according to Ms. Bull, the independent interim year counselor.
“Youre building a resume that is directly relevant to getting a job,” she said.
Whatever your past have been, you have a spotless future. 无论过去如何，未来总是崭新的。
Life is full of inevitable highs and lows. Dont complain, dont explain, just maintain. 人生充满了起起伏伏，不要抱怨，不要解释，要做的就是坚持！
But students and parents are not without concern in considering gap years. Chiefly, many are worried that a student who takes a break may not get back on track and actually enroll. In response, the panel emphasized that, most often, time away reenergizes academic interest and breaks up what can be a rote formula of life progression; as Anna Quindlens daughter said of gap time before school, it allows avoidance of the four Cs—a limited cycle “from cradle to college to cubicle to cemetery.”
Students may also be concerned about being older than peers when entering college, Ms. Bull said. “But I tell them that youre not as agebound in college. Age doesnt matter.”
Sabrina Skau
Ms. Skau, who is now teaching English in Argentina, is among a growing number of highachieving students who are contemplating a year off before college—known as a gap year—as a release from mounting pressures to gain admittance to top colleges.
By the time she graduated from high school, Sabrina Skau needed a break. She was 18. She was exhausted.
“I see more gapyear programs reaching out to us,” said Erin K. Johnston, a college guidance counselor at the National Cathedral School in Washington. “I see kids coming up with the idea on their own.”
More college consultants are recommending gap years as well, said Steven Roy Goodman, a consultant in Washington, who said he counsels at least 20 percent of his clients to take one, whereas he hardly did a decade ago.
For some students, the pressure is so great to get into college—any college—that they need time to recover once they finally get the news. When Landon C. White, 18, graduated from high school in Denver last spring and received his acceptance package from Bard College, he decided he needed time to “create a person rather than a college student.” Mr. White, who is studying in France through a company called Southern France Youth Institute, based in Sandpoint, Idaho, said his gap year had provided a necessary psychological pause. “Im recuperating,” he said. “Now I get to be myself.”
For some students, a gap year can be a valuable breather, even without a 7,000mile trip.
Emily Hadden, 19, from Tenafly, N.J., deferred her enrollment at Duke in spring 2006 and spent the next year living a dozen or so miles from her familys home in a studio apartment in Manhattan, where she studied ballet. While her friends “were all confused why I wasnt going to college right away,” she enjoyed simply exhaling—reading books she had put off, mulling careers, perhaps journalism, and learning independence.
“If anything,” she added from the safety of Duke housing, where she was surrounded by other highachieving 19yearolds, college “felt like a step backward.”
Why you should know him: Thomas Suarezs interest in technology and programming led him to learn Python, Java, and C “just to get the basics down.” He built an app and then coaxedcoax：If you coax someone into doing something, you gently try to persuade them to do it. his parents into paying the $99 fee to get his app, “Earth Fortune,” in the app store. Thomas also started an app club at school to help other kids build and share their creations, and is now starting his own company, CarrotCorp.
Princeton University created a program to send a tenth or more of newly admitted students to the U.S. university for a year of social service work in a foreign country before they set foot on the campus as freshmen.
Princetons president, Shirley Tilghman, said in an interview that such a program would give students a more international perspective, add to their maturity and give them a break from academic pressures. She called it a year of “cleansing the palate of high school, giving them a year to regroup.”
“People are too young when they start college,” said Allan Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education. “This way, they would have a year to mature, and they can do something constructive.”
Gillian Tett
英国《金融时报》专栏作家
Twentyfive years ago, I embarked on an intense journey in Pakistan. I had just finished school in Britain, and decided to take a gap year before university, volunteering on an aid project. So I travelled to a remote corner of the Sindh desert, where I worked with a churchlinked medical group, before spending time in the northwest of Pakistan, working with children.
25年前，我在巴基斯坦踏上了一段紧张的旅程。那时我刚刚在英国中学毕业，决定在上大学前体验一次“间隔年”（gap year)，为一个援助项目进行志愿者服务。所以我前往巴基斯坦信德省沙漠里的一处穷乡僻壤，与一家和教会有联系的医疗队一起工作，之后又花了一些时间在巴基斯坦西北部帮助当地儿童。
It was—unsurprisingly—a transforming experience, which taught me much about the fragility and value of life.
毫不意外，那是一段转变人生的经历。关于生命的脆弱和人生的价值，这段经历教会了我许多。
Robert Clagett
A former dean of admissions at Middlebury College and former senior admissions officer at Harvard College
As the number of students who opt to take a gap year has grown, so, too, has awareness of gap year benefits to the student, said Robert Clagett.
Mr. Clagett said he is compiling data from institutions across the country on gap year student performance once they matriculate, and he cited Middleburys own statistics of recent years.
The data demonstrated that average G.P.A. for Middlebury students who took a break—35 people this year—was consistently higher than that of those who did not. （He noted that selfselection could be partly at play, that gap year students are typically more affluent and may have some different, unifying qualities.)
Mr. Clagetts motivation in studying the significance of a gap year is to “disabuse the parents out there of the idea that taking a year off is going to somehow mean disaster for their kids.” He added, “I think the opposite is true.”
One audience member cited his sons interest in “riding a motorcycle around South America like Che Guevara,” asking after the value of “individual meandering” over a formalized program.
“From a colleges point of view it really doesnt matter,” Mr. Clagett said. “They can stay home and eat bonbons if they want.”
Gap time—regardless of what one does—combats the “let down” a student feels once arriving on campus, Mr. Clagett said. “There can be this feeling of ‘now what?’ And that can lead to lower achievement, to lower selfesteem. Gap programs nip that in the bud.”
A gap year does not have to be expensive, Linda Connelly, a posthigh school counselor at New Trier High School in Illinois, said. She cited one student who stayed local for six months, working in a deli and taking a course in Chinese. For the following six months, he volunteered in Asia, having financed his trip there.
The student broadened his perspective on the world, she said, uncovering his passion for the East. “And he learned he never wanted to work in a deli again,” she said, laughing.
Beyond personal exploration, gap year students are also advantaged in the job market later on, according to Ms. Bull, the independent interim year counselor.
“Youre building a resume that is directly relevant to getting a job,” she said.
Whatever your past have been, you have a spotless future. 无论过去如何，未来总是崭新的。
Life is full of inevitable highs and lows. Dont complain, dont explain, just maintain. 人生充满了起起伏伏，不要抱怨，不要解释，要做的就是坚持！
But students and parents are not without concern in considering gap years. Chiefly, many are worried that a student who takes a break may not get back on track and actually enroll. In response, the panel emphasized that, most often, time away reenergizes academic interest and breaks up what can be a rote formula of life progression; as Anna Quindlens daughter said of gap time before school, it allows avoidance of the four Cs—a limited cycle “from cradle to college to cubicle to cemetery.”
Students may also be concerned about being older than peers when entering college, Ms. Bull said. “But I tell them that youre not as agebound in college. Age doesnt matter.”
Sabrina Skau
Ms. Skau, who is now teaching English in Argentina, is among a growing number of highachieving students who are contemplating a year off before college—known as a gap year—as a release from mounting pressures to gain admittance to top colleges.
By the time she graduated from high school, Sabrina Skau needed a break. She was 18. She was exhausted.
“I see more gapyear programs reaching out to us,” said Erin K. Johnston, a college guidance counselor at the National Cathedral School in Washington. “I see kids coming up with the idea on their own.”
More college consultants are recommending gap years as well, said Steven Roy Goodman, a consultant in Washington, who said he counsels at least 20 percent of his clients to take one, whereas he hardly did a decade ago.
For some students, the pressure is so great to get into college—any college—that they need time to recover once they finally get the news. When Landon C. White, 18, graduated from high school in Denver last spring and received his acceptance package from Bard College, he decided he needed time to “create a person rather than a college student.” Mr. White, who is studying in France through a company called Southern France Youth Institute, based in Sandpoint, Idaho, said his gap year had provided a necessary psychological pause. “Im recuperating,” he said. “Now I get to be myself.”
For some students, a gap year can be a valuable breather, even without a 7,000mile trip.
Emily Hadden, 19, from Tenafly, N.J., deferred her enrollment at Duke in spring 2006 and spent the next year living a dozen or so miles from her familys home in a studio apartment in Manhattan, where she studied ballet. While her friends “were all confused why I wasnt going to college right away,” she enjoyed simply exhaling—reading books she had put off, mulling careers, perhaps journalism, and learning independence.
“If anything,” she added from the safety of Duke housing, where she was surrounded by other highachieving 19yearolds, college “felt like a step backward.”
Why you should know him: Thomas Suarezs interest in technology and programming led him to learn Python, Java, and C “just to get the basics down.” He built an app and then coaxedcoax：If you coax someone into doing something, you gently try to persuade them to do it. his parents into paying the $99 fee to get his app, “Earth Fortune,” in the app store. Thomas also started an app club at school to help other kids build and share their creations, and is now starting his own company, CarrotCorp.