Despite rising awareness of Gap Years and a COVID-induced surge in Gap Years, the number of high school students taking a Gap Year has returned to pre-pandemic levels. We know this from two different sources.
One is high school data from Gap Year Solutions research. In our September – October 2023 survey, 21 public high schools told us that an average of 2.6% of their Class of 2023 graduates said they planned to take a Gap Year. This number is unchanged from the average 2.6% for the Class of 2019 provided by 33 public high schools from our November 2019 – February 2020 survey. (Keep in mind that these percentages are likely underreporting the true numbers of high school graduates taking a Gap Year, since counselors never hear from some students, and others take a Gap Year after reporting acceptance of a college admissions offer.)
We received responses from a total of 48 high schools across the U.S. in fall 2023. We excluded 27 private schools from the comparison above, since our earlier research included only public schools. The private schools – with one-third the students of the public group in our survey – told us that 3.5% of their Class of 2023 graduates took a Gap Year.
Our second source for understanding pre vs. post COVID Gap Year numbers is higher ed data. We surveyed colleges and universities about Gap Year deferral rates in 2017-18, 2021 and 2022, and also relied on some publicly reported deferral data during the pandemic. We estimated before COVID that 1.8% of admitted students deferred matriculation for a Gap Year. This spiked to 4.9% during the first year of COVID, and settled back to 1.9% in the second year of the pandemic.
Note: All numbers here exclude the Ivies and Stanford. These schools tend to encourage Gap Years, have always had above average numbers of deferrals, and had especially large increases for the first incoming class during COVID (fall of 2020). For example, Harvard, normally around 7% Gap Year deferrals, spiked to 21%. Yale, normally 4%, jumped to 26%. Dartmouth, normally 3%, rose to 14%. And Penn, normally 2%, increased to 8% during the first year of COVID.
There are many theories for why Gap Year numbers in the U.S. have stayed stubbornly low, around 2-3% of high school graduates, but that is a topic for another post.
