 Hello my people, my name is Meacham, I'm your college counselor, and today we're talking about gap years. Do you need one? Why should you consider one? And what can you do when you're on one? If you don't have a complete college list yet, then you definitely need a gap year. If you know where you want to apply but you haven't gotten those applications done yet and you need significant financial aid or like big scholarships, then you definitely need a gap year because your chances of getting that money are really, really low. The biggest awards tend to come in the early rounds and if you haven't applied early and you need a ton of aid, you're pretty much subscribed. And the gap year is one of the best ways for you to achieve that goal of getting really big scholarships or really good financial aid. So let's talk about what a gap year can do for you and why you should consider taking one. The first thing I want to talk about is money. A gap year is going to make it easier for you to get bigger scholarships and more financial aid because first of all you have more time to work on your application and get it done early. I'm really starting to lose my mind, guys. Like people don't understand this. I've been saying it for years. I don't know how much more I can take. I'm starting to kind of crack. You can also get a job and save up some money which is going to be important for some of those extra incidental expenses. Even if you get a full ride scholarship, they're probably not going to cover every other expense you have like the cost of getting your visa or your flight to the United States. And once you get on campus, I mean you have a meal plan and you have a dorm, but like basic things like toothpaste are not necessarily included in that. So you need to have some money if you want to apply to the United States. So taking a gap year can be a good way for you to save up a little more money, cushion your finances and put yourself in a better position to not only get the best offers from your universities, but also to be able to actually go. Even my man, I'm in as a good example, like he got a full ride scholarship from Dartmouth and they were even willing to cover like his flight expenses and stuff, but he couldn't get a visa in Yemen because Yemen and instead had to go to Egypt to get his US visa. Nobody was going to pay for that flight to Egypt. Like he had to have at least some money to go to Egypt and stay there for a couple of weeks so that he could get his US visa and then be taken to Dartmouth by the funds that he was given from the university. So even when you get a massive full ride scholarship, you need some money to make this work. Take a gap year, get some money, apply early, get more money. The second way that a gap year can really help you is by allowing you to boost your academics. First of all, you can learn languages, which could be very helpful if you're looking to get a good deal, for example, in Germany, where studies are free. You can also take courses online related to your majors so that you get a little bit of previous knowledge. You can include that stuff in your CV or in your activities section of Common App. If you're an architecture or design or art student and you don't have a portfolio yet, like you're not going to make it in time to apply to the US this year, no way. So if you're considering applying to like a film major and you've never made a video before, you really should take a gap year and dedicate your time to developing that craft. And another way you can boost your academics through a gap year is by taking more time to prepare for standardized testing. If you're looking for big scholarships, the SAT can definitely help you get more from universities. A lot of universities, even the test optional ones, still have scholarships that give more to students who present high test scores. And if you're just now asking me about the SAT for 2024, like, ah, this is literally happening. I'm not even joking. Like this, this is a thing that I'm getting asked about right now. It takes time to prepare for the SAT, but you can make it go a little bit faster by working with the SAT Crash Course who have sponsored this video. Thesatcrashcourse.com has 20 digital SAT mock exams that you can use to boost your scores on the real digital SAT. They use an interface that looks exactly like what you see on the real SAT application, Blue Book. You can get one test for free just by going onto their website, creating an account, adding it to your cart so that you can see it for yourself. But if you want to get a good deal on the test that they have for sale, you can use the code SCORE and get 20% off any of the purchases you make on their website. Using that code helps me out a little bit too. I really appreciate your support. And I really appreciate thesatcrashcourse.com support for continuing to support this channel and for just being awesome people to work with. Love you guys. Thank you so much. So a gap year can help you get more money and it can boost your academic profile so that you have a better chance of getting admitted. But there's other things it can do for you too. Gap year is a great opportunity for you to add more things to your profile. For example, if you're looking at extracurricular activities, maybe there's something that you've really always wanted to do and now you have a year where you can just dedicate your time to doing that. In fact, I think the gap year is where some of the best activities come from. Two of the most successful cases we've had in SCORE, Claudia and Alba, who I visited in New York City at Columbia University. They're on full-arrived scholarships. You can check that out here. They talked about what they did on their gap years and both of them created their own activities. They found things they were passionate about and took them to the next level. Alba, for example, was a Model United Nations delegate and she was very successful in MUN, but like, so are tens of thousands of college applicants every year. That doesn't really make you special. But what Alba did to make it more special was to bring MUN to public schools in Peru. She trained their teams, organized an event and brought them together so that they could enjoy MUN as well. That's a great example of taking your activity to the next level. It's one thing to compete, it's one thing to win, it's one thing to become a head delegate. But remember, there are thousands of head delegates that will apply every year to Columbia. But only one took the time to take that activity and bring it to other people and show a generous, passionate spirit for it. That's why Alba's in Columbia. The fourth thing that a gap year gives you that is probably the most valuable thing of all is time. Time for you to figure out where you want to apply, time to work on your applications, time to write amazing essays. All of these things take time and if you haven't dedicated enough of your time to it, whether that's because you were just really busy with school or you had some life problems, then take a step back and take that gap year. I cannot stress it enough. Applying early is the most important thing you can do if you need a big scholarship or you need major financial aid. If you've already missed the November deadlines for early applications, then you really seriously need to start thinking about taking that gap year. If you still haven't built a college list, you need to take a gap year. Like you need to take time to do this right. Rushing things at the last minute is not going to produce the results that you're looking for. You might get lucky, you know, you might get lucky, but I would rather be smart than lucky. If you're asking me for essay reviews in December, you need a gap year, you need that time. But each of them, isn't a gap year going to look bad on my record? The answer is no. In fact, a gap year usually adds to your application. It makes you a more mature and well presented person to the universities. So it really only has positive effects. The exceptions to this are maybe if you take two or three gap years without making sort of any progress in your life. A gap year is not something that you should do because you didn't get admitted to the universities that you wanted to. If you're just thinking, I'll take a gap year and I'll apply again. And if I don't get in, I'll take another gap year and I'll apply again. You need to move on with your life. You need to have a plan. You need to make some changes to your application and maybe some changes to your college list so that you have a better chance of getting what you need the next year. I wanna address some of the criticisms of gap years or some of the reasons why people say they don't want a gap year. I don't wanna waste a year of my life. Let me just say, if I could take a gap year right now, I would do it in a heartbeat. Like, oh my God, that would be so nice. Once you go to college, you're basically starting a train ride for the rest of your life where you're gonna exit college. You're probably gonna get a job. You're gonna continue in that job. You might get another job and then another job and then maybe start a company and then get another job. And before you know it, you're gonna be like 40 and you haven't rested a single month of your life. This is the one opportunity in your life that you can actually take a year and just kind of do whatever. You're probably gonna live to 100 anyway with advances in modern medical science. Like, what have you got to lose? I could understand if this was like 10,000 years ago when you were gonna die at like 40, but you know, you've got time. I also see a lot of people resistant to the gap year because they don't wanna be older than other people when they go to university. But I think it's important to mention that like a lot of other people take gap years. You're not gonna be older than everybody. And remember, there's upperclassmen who will be your age and who you will probably still share some classes with. So you're gonna have plenty of opportunities to make friends with people your age. You'll also probably find in college that age really doesn't matter that much. And so if you're worrying about like making friends because you're a year older than other people, don't worry about it, you'll be fine. All in all, a gap year is really a good way for you to boost your chances of getting into college with the financial aid that you need, with some extra money in your pocket, and the time to make sure you get everything done without stressing out. You really only get one chance in life to go ahead and go to college. So you wanna make it the best chance you can. And if you need some help with that, feel free to reach out in the comments below or go to prepwithscore.com to learn more about what we can do for you. Our goal here is to help people make smart decisions when it comes to going to university abroad. And one of the smartest decisions you can make is to apply early and get your shit together well in advance. And a gap year can really help you do it. So if you're one of those hundreds of people who have hit me up in like the last month, just begging for help to go to college abroad in 2024 because you just finished school or you just started thinking about it now, the solution to that is to accept responsibility and then say, I screwed up, I'm gonna take a gap year to do it right. Please, thank you. And thanks again to thesatcrashcourse.com for sponsoring this video. If you wanna learn more about them, you can go to thesatcrashcourse.com and if you want to get a 20% discount on everything they offer, use the promo code SCORE when you're at checkout and I will see you next time, my people.