COVID-19 Impact on Students’ Decisions to Take Gap Years

Due to the ongoing pandemic, many incoming first-year college students and even some upperclassmen are deciding to take a gap year. Before COVID-19, taking a gap year was already a path many students took, but we see an indefinite rise of students taking this path with the pandemic. This raises another important question: what are the differences between taking a Gap year pre-COVID vs. during COVID? We hope to answer how gap years affect students' learning and academic patterns and analyze socio-economic factors such as family's financial capacities and on-campus housing. Moreover, it is also crucial to examine the long-term impacts of the increase in gap years. What will happen to tuition, higher-education availability, and the importance of college? We aimed to answer all of these questions through a series of surveys.