Postponing College Admission? 5 Ways a Gap Year Abroad Can Help You Succeed
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If you’ve landed on this blog, chances are you’re already considering college deferment—but maybe you’re not entirely convinced it’s the right choice. Here’s the truth: there are plenty of legitimate, good reasons to defer admission, and there’s even research to back it up.
Taking a gap year abroad is an opportunity to gain skills, experiences, and perspectives that can set you up for greater success in college and beyond. From advancing your language skills, becoming more open-minded, or simply recharging, here are five gap year benefits you won’t want to miss out on.
1. You Can Advance Your Language Skills
If you’ve been studying a foreign language throughout school and want to take your skills to the next level, participating in an immersion program is a fantastic gap year opportunity. You can gain fluency, build cultural competency, and develop the confidence to use your language skills in real-world settings.
Immersion programs help you go beyond the classroom by integrating language into every aspect of daily life. Imagine improving your French while living in Toulouse or your Spanish while living in Seville, practicing over home-cooked meals with your host family, chatting with locals at the market, or joining cultural events in your host city.
These experiences reinforce what you’ve already learned and help you pick up the nuances and fluency that can’t be taught in a traditional classroom.
CIEE’s Gap Year travel programs perfectly balance language classes and cultural immersion. With around 15–20 hours a week of language instruction and the chance to live with a host family, you can experience constant exposure to your target language and culture. Beyond the classroom, you’ll explore your new city and make new friends—all while significantly improving your foreign language skills.
2. You Can Improve Your Creativity, Open-Mindedness and More
Travel is a powerful way to develop life skills that stay with you long after the adventure ends.
Travel helps sharpen your ability to concentrate and adapt to diverse situations. Navigating unfamiliar environments requires focus and quick thinking, helping you feel more confident when facing challenges.
Being in new, sometimes uncomfortable situations helps you tolerate ambiguity and learn to problem-solve creatively. Researchers in Singapore found that people who travel often are better at coming up with diverse, unconventional ideas.
3. You Can Make Your Resume Stand Out
Initiative, independence and global experience are qualities that are increasingly prized by employers and universities. A gap year abroad offers a unique opportunity to develop and highlight these qualities in a way few other experiences can when you’re fresh out of high school.
For example, you can talk about how living and learning a language in a new cultural environment helped you develop global awareness and cultural understanding. You can mention how handling day-to-day challenges made you more adaptable.
By thoughtfully integrating these experiences into your resume, you present yourself as a well-rounded candidate equipped with language proficiency and problem-solving skills—attributes that are highly attractive in today's globalized job market.
Read our recent blog on how to highlight gap year abroad activities on your resume, which includes an example of what you could add to your resume.
4. You Can Recharge and Prepare for Academic Success
Taking a break before starting college can be one of the best ways to prevent burnout and regain mental clarity. With the constant pressures of high school academics, extracurriculars, and college applications, stepping away for a gap year offers a much-needed reset.
A study published by the Harvard Business Review in 2024 found that gap-year students return to school with higher motivation and better academic performance
5. You Can Discover Your Passion and Purpose
Not everyone knows exactly what they want to study or the goals they want to aim for right after high school—and that’s okay. A gap year could offer a rare opportunity to step back, reflect, and explore who you are outside the structure of academics.
College is a significant investment of your time, energy, and finances. Entering such an environment requires a huge mental and emotional commitment, which can feel overwhelming or exhilarating, depending on how prepared you feel. The more confident you are about what you want to pursue, the more likely you will succeed and enjoy the experience.
By taking this time to explore and reflect, you can start college with a stronger sense of direction and purpose.
Ready, Set, Pause! — A Year Off Can Set You Up for Success
While there are pros and cons to deferring university, taking a year to explore, grow, and recharge can be a big investment in your future.
CIEE Gap Year Programs offer structured, immersive experiences in exciting countries; homestays; and the chance to jump to a language level while gaining invaluable life skills. Discover your gap year abroad program today!