FREE The Gap Year Between High School and College Essay (original) (raw)

Are students more or less successful taking a gap year between high school and college? Traditionally, university entry proceeds immediately after high school. However, it is statistically proven that there are more beneficial outcomes than unbeneficial outcomes when taking a year off before enrolling into a university. There are many benefits of taking a gap year, one of them being a way for students to take time off and think about their academic direction and professional goals they want to achieve before actually doing so. Right out of high school, not all students will know exactly what they want to do for the rest of their lives. According to the University of LaVerne (ULV, 2013) not all students will even want to pursue the same major they started with after a couple of years. Typically, 50% of students entering college right out of high school are undecided and approximately 50% – 70% of students will change their majors at least once. Taking a year off before enrolling into college will give students the opportunity to think about which academic pathway they're really interested in pursuing. The American Gap Association (AGA, 2015) shows studies that sixty percent of students who take a gap year said the experience during that year either "set me on my current career path/academic major" or "confirmed my choice of career/academic major.".
Not only does taking the gap year allow students to decide on a major and career path, but it will allow students to build work experience. Having work experience looks great on resumes and is something that most competitive colleges like to see in potential students (Purnell, 2015). A student with work experience and good work ethics is more likely to be accepted into a university compared to a student with little to no work experience. Aside from work experience looking good on a resume, it builds quality in a student in the way of gaining maturity.

1. High SchoolVsCollege

High School Versus College High school and College are two institutions of education. ... College is more academically challenge than high school. College students are more responsible for any actions that take place in their life, than high school students are. ... The school year is 26 weeks long; some classes extend over both semesters some do not. ... College students usually have gaps of hours between classes; a class time varies throughout the day and evening. ...

2. Gender Gap

"The Gender Gap: Women Paid Less Than Men, Even in High-Tech Jobs" is another article I found interesting because it relates to the high tech industry which is very vast in the Bay Area and was done by ABCnews.com. ... This article speaks about the pay gap between male and female professors at Universities. ... Women who are high school graduates typically earn about 71 percent as much as comparably-educated men, female drop-outs earn 74 percent as much as male drop-outs. ... The median earnings for female college graduates are also 74 percent of the median for male college graduates. ... ...

3. High School Drop Outs

The rates reflect the percent of students that drop out in a single year without completing high school, and the rates change by the percent of population in a given age group range who have not finished high school or who have not enrolled at the time. ... A total of 25,578 students dropped out of Oklahoma City Public High Schools last year (Thomas Jenolan). ... The gap between dropouts and more educated people is widening as opportunities increase for high skill workers and all but disappear for the less skilled workers (Malcom X). ... Recent dropouts will earn $ 200,000 less than high sch...

4. The Knowledge Gap

There is a difference in communication skills between those in high and low socioeconomic status - difference in education. ... She is now a senior member who will be graduating from high school and going to college to major in Computer Technology. ... Terrance is a graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School and now is employed with the W.A.Y. ... Now that I have graduated from high school I will be starting college in January to further my education in Computers". ... Some groups have worked to close the gap by acquiring computers for inner-city schools. ...

5. The Slippery Slope of Minority Success Rates

In so many families, even in 2013, there are students graduating from high school this year and heading to college as the first member in their family to continue their education and strive for a degree. ... Even switching to community college from a 4-year university is a tough option for students, and the graduation rates at community college are even grimmer; the US Department of Education reports the official community college graduation rate is only at 18 percent, and if transfer students are included, it only rises to 40 percent, Jennifer Cotton explains. Cotton also explains a process ...

6. Community colleges

Despite the negative misconceptions of junior colleges, they bridge the gap between high schools and universities and create opportunities for more of the United States population to achieve higher education. ... Junior colleges, also mostly known and referred today as a community college, were first thought about because educators began to realize that students needed more educational opportunities after high school. The idea of these smaller colleges came about because educators saw that a lot of students were not able to go away to a four-year college after high school and they also saw tha...

7. Urban schools

This gap appears before kindergarten, and it persists into adulthood. ... The black white tests score gap does not appear to be an inevitable fact of nature. ... The SAT was developed in the 1930s to help selective colleges identify talented students from mediocre high schools who performed poorly on traditional achievements tests because they had not studied the relevant subject matter (Asberry 1997). ... In the 1960s a great amount of black students in selective colleges became a political issue Black college applicants scored below whites on all sort of tests. ... The annual city-by-cit...

8. SAT

Today, the SAT I play's an important role in young high schools student's college careers. ... Every year, more than 2 million students nationwide take the test, (The Big Test: SAT I, p.l) Consequently, every fall, the College Board publishes information concerning the demographics, socioeconomic, and academic data on about 1 million high school seniors with SAT I scores. ... Similar to the gap between men and women, this phenomenon cannot easily be explained. ... While the SAT I is primarily geared towards high school seniors with post secondary school intentions, it is not restric...

9. Single-Sex and Coeducational Schools

"While the benefits of single-sex education are fairly small, they tend to be in areas that have historically favored men and therefore represent a potentially effective vehicle for mitigating longstanding gender gaps" (Sax 2009). ... The author acknowledges that though there are differences between single-sex and coeducational high schools, this doesn't mean that one method is superior to the other and doesn't draw "unilateral conclusions" but tries to find which conditions can from single-sex schools can be transfer to coeducational schools. 2. ... " This ...

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