Gap Year Programs | Gap Year Travel | Gap Year Program

Use LEAPNOW to create your "ideal" Gap Year Program

Working with an artist in Bali, Indonesia

What IS a GAP YEAR? One definition is "a post-high school year of self-exploration and personal growth that leads to clearer direction and motivation for college studies and for your life. A Gap Year may include travel, cultural immersion, directed study, service or conservation projects, internship opportunities and more." A Gap Year is a chance for you to direct your own learning, and align with yourself before doing more traditional classroom education. One of the unwelcome side effects of sitting in a classroom for 12 years, is that we go into what we at LEAPNOW call an "educational trance," which means that we forget our life purpose, think that we don't have much to offer until we get our degree, and think that education is something that is done TO us, rather than something we direct ourselves and that flows FROM our organic life purpose.

To read one student's gap year experience, visit this article in Lamorinda Weekly.

Students in the UK, Australia, and Canada commonly take time off between high school and college to gain real-life experience through travel, language immersion, community service and conservation programs, outdoor adventure, and professional internships. After completing high school there is a natural "gap" that a young adult can take advantage of - though a gap year or semester can occur at any point during your educational process (which ideally last as long as your lifetime!) Students in the U.S. are beginning to understand the value of taking time "on" before continuing on with college.

As Gwyeth T. Smith Jr. puts it in this article in the Washington Post:

"Parents of high school seniors across the country have hired me as an admissions consultant. They want assurances that their children will be attending top colleges a year from now.

Again and again, I say: "I hope not."

To their surprise, I explain that I'd rather see most of these young men and women far from a campus for a while. I urge them to bus tables in a restaurant, apprentice for an architect or pull weeds on a community farm. In their free time, I add, they should devour a stack of great books."

Gap Year Programs with LEAPNOW

LEAPNOW offers four distinct gap year programs that can be used as a full or partial Gap Year:

LEAPYEAR is designed as an ideal Gap Year, and offers guided and solo travel, structured and unstructured experience, inner and outer exploration, and a full curriculum to help you know yourself deeply. Perhaps best of all is the fact that you receive a full year of college credit through Antioch University Seattle - allowing you to take time "on" without having to take time "off." A further year of unlimited internships is built into LEAPYEAR with access to our full database of 6,000+ options in 126 countries.
Deeper Waters is a semester-long program that combines inner and outer exploration that can be completely tailored to your specific interests. A Gap Year generally follows the "road less traveled" and can be a lonely pursuit, and Deeper Waters is an inexpensive way to add conscious community, a guided inner journey, times of reflection to balance outer exploration, and our amazing database of 6,000+ volunteer and work options to your Gap Year. College credit is available as an option.
One Revolution is the perfect way to start a Gap Year, and it can also be combined with Deeper Waters. It lasts 5 months, and takes you on a guided trip round the Earth - visiting Latin America, Asia and Africa. Within "One Rev" you have the support of a group and two leaders, but you are expected to tailor your experiences on each continent to your individual interests. College credit is available.
Learn to Serve: India is a semester-long program of service in India's City of Light, Varanasi. In addition to service, students have the opportunity to study Hindi, live with Indian families, and take classes in crafts, dancing, cooking, and more. Learn to Serve: India is a great pairing with One Revolution or Deeper Waters, and can also be used to deepen the experiences of LEAPYEAR.
Individual Internships: We offer many individual internships that you can put together in a series to create your own customized Gap Year program. These generally last three months, but many can be shortened or extended.

To further extend a Gap Year, you could do a LEAPYEAR followed a year of customized internships, or you could start your Gap Year travel with the One Revolution Program or Deeper Waters in the Fall Semester, followed by another two internships between January and June.

Why take a Gap Year Travel Program?

Primary reasons to take a Gap Year:

Take a break from one way of learning (in rows under fluorescent lights listening to someone talk in a classroom) before doing another four years of classroom work. A chance to break the educational trance that tells us that education is something that happens “to” us, rather than through us.
Find a valid and personal reason to be in college – beyond the fact that “everyone else is doing it.”
Try on a career option before making a commitment to a major in college - practice teaching in Ghana before studying education, or work in a medical clinic in Honduras before committing to pre-med study and med school, study art in a hands-on way in central Mexico to see if it's something you want to spend more time/money/study on.
To leave home and do something real rather than contrived – step out from under your parents roof, and learn to be in the world as an adult before doing further classroom study.
To become more mature, make mistakes, let the well fill back up, rekindle your desire to learn.
To put your education in the context of the larger world - to gain worldly experience - to take on responsibility and give something back to others.
To do something developmentally appropriate: When you are 18 and have spent 12 years in a classroom, it is entirely appropriate to learn for a time in a different mode. It's appropriate to find out who you are, and explore parts of the world. If you simply replace your family with a college that houses you and feeds you and asks you to jump through its hoops, you are simply replacing your parents with parental surrogates - and a vital maturation that wants to happen at this time is much less likely to happen.

Ideally, Gap Year programs should give you a break from learning in the classroom, engage your mind and body fully, and allow you to explore and develop interests that you may not have had a chance to experience. Though each Gap Year program will be different, important tips for putting together a successful Gap Year include:

The following natural blocks of time give a good structure to gap year travel: September through early December, a holiday return home, January through March, April through June.
Pay attention to transitions. You are most vulnerable during transitions. Pay extra to have someone meet you at the airport you fly into. Make sure you have a backup plan – such as a hotel near the airport to check into if you miss your connection.
Consider starting with a group program - so that you have support if you are traveling abroad for the first time, and support during the inevitable homesickness and culture shock. Start with more structure at the beginning, and less at the end - so that you can develop initiative and independence.
To save money, you can stay in the U.S. or this hemisphere - to keep transportation costs down. Stringing a series of internships together in one region will keep airfares to a minimum. Consider working where you can legally work for pay - in the U.S., UK, or Australia. You can usually receive room and board in exchange for your work, if you work in the areas of social service, teaching, agriculture, construction or hotel work. You can also build in a period of work in the U.S. to earn money for your next adventure.
Consider starting in a foreign country with a period of language study - to get your feet on the ground, and get oriented to the culture before engaging more deeply. Plan on two weeks and up if you are brushing up a language, a month or longer of intensive study if you need to gain enough proficiency to get around comfortably. Add a homestay so that you meet their culture on their terms and are forced to practice the language you are learning.

From our full-year very structured and challenging LEAPYEAR program, through One Revolution and Deeper Waters, to completely customizable individual internships, LEAPNOW gives you a full spectrum of options so that you can put together YOUR ideal gap year!