Advantages

Taking a gap year pre/post university is the best time to go for many different reasons.

• It’s one of the only times in your life where you are likely to be financially carefree.
• Although you may be in debt from university you will still have fewer debts now, than you will have when you have taken out a mortgage and become more settled.
• If you have a guaranteed job or university place to return to, you will have a definite reason and incentive for returning from travelling, avoiding the problem of what to do when and if you return.
• If you choose to go before university the gap year may be seen as a means of setting you apart from other students in terms of your maturity and responsibility
• It will help young people who are moving to different cities with making new friends, adapting to new environments and learning to be independent
• From an employer’s point of view a gap year can be used as a differentiation mechanism for job applicants. Your future employer can assume that you have learnt time management, budgeting and increased your self confidence from your travelling adventures (unless you’ve spent a year lying on a beach)
• It will also help you with the graduate application process. You will have loads of different examples of decision making and teamwork, providing you with invaluable life skills and great examples for the interviewer
• It enables you to get the travel bug out of your system now and settle down to the real world or university experience with the intention of sticking to your career and making progression
• A gap year can be an eye opening experience – it will help determine what you want from your degree, and out of life, by challenging your points of view and perspective
• It allows you to see the world and gain firsthand experience of different cultures and ways of life
• If you work abroad you will gain insight into the workplace ensuring that you are able to adapt to many different scenarios

Disadvantages

• If you are going on a gap year with no real travelling desire, and are simply going to postpone repayment of your debts, this isn’t for you. Getting yourself into more debt, when you should be clearing your existing debt, is not the best scenario to be in.
• Similarly following all your friends by having a gap year (or not) is no better – you have to want to do the gap year as it will be emotionally and financially draining
• You will find that life has not ended just because you have been away and your friends have started university and careers while you were travelling. You have to be able to accept this change and remember what you have gained in the same comparative time. Playing catch-up with them will not be feasible.
• Gap years can change people in both good and bad ways – the life you have back home may not have the same appeal after you return especially if “itchy feet” syndrome takes hold.
• It can cost a lot