A Gap Year Produces a More Prepared Student

In June 2021, Montana Lee graduated from high school completely exhausted.

Because of the pandemic, her last year and a half of high school had been remote – just a kid holed up in her bedroom staring at her laptop screen for hours on end.

She applied to Duke and was accepted. She was excited to enroll.

But not immediately.

“I was so burned out from high school,” says Lee, a native of New York City. “I just didn’t want to use my brain anymore.”

So with the support and encouragement from her parents and, crucially, Duke’s undergraduate admissions office, she headed not to Durham but to the Catskills in upstate New York. She would spend several months working at a rural farm and wedding venue before traveling to Europe for several months after that.

This was her gap year, and Duke officials would like more students to follow her lead.

For high-achieving students, elite universities like Duke are often seen as a finish line of sorts – the thing you achieve by racking up great grades and associated honors throughout high school, says Christoph Guttentag, Duke’s dean of undergraduate admissions.

That’s the wrong mindset, he cautions.

“My worry is that this has represented a narrow perspective rather than a broad perspective and that (students) see college as the culmination and the next step rather than an opportunity to explore and grow and be wrong,” Guttentag says. “A gap year gets them out of the mindset and gives them a chance to do something different than the 12 that preceded it and the four years ahead. I wish more students would take a gap year.”

Students who spend a year working or traveling or exploring an art, hobby or similar passion often arrive on campus more mature and prepared to take on the rigors of the Duke experience, Guttentag says. Along with simply being a year older, these students often come with a broader mindset and greater curiosity about the world – all of which are helpful in the classroom.

This proved true for Lee, the student whose gap year first took her to a rural horse farm that hosted weddings with farm-to-table food. She worked in a greenhouse, did groundskeeping, harvested vegetables and then worked on the weekends as a wedding server, pouring wine and serving food to guests.

For a second job, she worked as a hostess at a steakhouse.

She earned about $10,000, which came in handy in the second half of the year when she moved to Paris. Living on her own, she found her way around the city, made friends, fine-tuned her French language skills and joined a thriving swing dance community.

“I’m really proud of myself for stepping outside of my comfort zone. It’s not easy to plunge into a new community in a foreign place,” Lee says. “The whole experience taught me a lot of skills that contributed greatly to my development. Without the gap year, I wouldn’t be who I am now — I may have walked a very different path.”

While Duke officials want more students to take a breath before starting college, they know it may seem a luxury. But thanks to the Duke Gap Year Program, funded by the Lauder Family Fund, students can apply for up to $15,000 to support their gap year activities.

This year, 25 students have received money through the program and are pursuing a variety of outside interests. One student is interning at the National Bank of Moldova. Another is participating in dance intensives and training around the world. Still another is participating in an exchange program in Germany.

Students seeking gap year aid explain their plans, and the undergraduate admissions office decides whether to help subsidize it, said Camey VanSant, senior assistant director for gap year programs with Duke’s undergraduate admissions office.

“Accessibility and inclusivity are underlying principles of this program,” VanSant said. “A lot of this is very expensive so any way we can help families make this possible is important.”

And VanSant knows parents and students may view a gap year as a way to lose academic momentum. But they should see it in a different light, she says.

“It takes maturity and produces maturity,” she says. “If we can show students and parents that this isn’t a diversion from what they’re doing but something that will help them be better college students and be more self-aware in college, that’s an important message to send.”

It worked for Lee, now a Duke sophomore.

“A gap year isn’t reserved for the privileged,” Lee said. “I think it’s really doable to find a job, work full time, and then also find something else to do. I’ve never met anyone who regretted a gap year.”