Gap Experiences

For graduating high-school seniors or current college students, a gap year or semester can be a great way to mature and gain invaluable life skills. A gap experience can help students perform better both in college and beyond.

Everything Summer® utilizes a proven process to identify ‘right-fit’ gap opportunities for our students, helping them maximize this transformative and memorable experience.

What is A Gap?

A gap year or semester is an experiential opportunity for a student to learn new skills, undergo important self-discovery, and position themselves to successfully start, or continue, college, as well as explore careers. Gap experiences can be broadly divided into:

  • Facilitated Group Experiences

  • Independent Experiences

 

Gap opportunities allow exploration & learning across a breadth of experiences

  • Internships

  • Work

  • Skill-building

  • Therapeutic component

  • …and so much more

  • Travel

  • Homestays

  • Language immersion

  • Community service

  • Academic experiences

Why Take A Gap?

Gap years and semesters help students perform better in college.

  • 90% of gap year students return to college within a year. — Wall Street Journal

  • A study conducted by Bob Clagett, former Dean of Admissions at Middlebury College, found that gap year students almost always over-perform academically relative to the “academic rating” they receive during the admissions process.

Gap experiences help students explore career options.

  • Gap internships allow students to gain real experience in one or more industries that interest them as potential career options.

  • Students can gain actual work experience, and learn the value of earning money (especially if they’re partially responsible for funding their own gap experience).

  • Students gain skills that will give them a competitive advantage when seeking internships or jobs. 

Gap experiences can have tremendous personal benefits — helping students learn more about themselves and their interests, providing them with an opportunity to mature at an accelerated rate, and exposing them to different cultures and experiences that will broaden their horizons.