This summer, Monika Lutz's life took an unusual turn. Instead of heading off to college, the high school graduate packed her bags for a Bengali jungle. Lutz, like a growing number of other young Americans, is taking a year off. Gap  years  are quite common in Britain and Australia, but they are just beginning to catch on in the U.S. Lutz, who grew up in Boulder, Colo., has put together a 14-month schedule that includes helping deliver solar power to some communities in India and interning   for a fashion designer in Shanghai---experiences that are worlds away from the lecture halls and university dormitories that await other students. "I could not be happier," she says. Why are students attracted to the gap-year concept? According to new survey data from Karl Haigler and Rae Nelson, education-policy experts and co-authors of The Gap-Year Advantage, the most common reason for this is to avoid burnout. "I felt like I was focused on college as a means to an end," says Kelsi Morgan, an incoming Middlebury College freshman who spent last year interning for a judge in Tulsa, Okla., and teaching English at an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. The hope is that after a year out of the classroom, students will enter college more energized, focused and mature. That can be an advantage for colleges too. Robert Clagett, dean of admissions at Middlebury, did some research a few years ago and found that a single gap semester was the strongest predictor of academic success at his school. Most experts recommend securing a spot in college before taking a gap year and warn against using the time off to lengthen your resume. "Most admissions folks can see right through that," says Jim Jump, the academic dean of St. Christopher's School in Richmond, Va. But for students like Lutz, who, after getting rejected from five Ivies, decided to take time off, a gap year can help focus interests. Lutz now plans to apply mostly to non-Ivies that have strong marketing programs. "This experience has really opened my eyes to the opportunities the world has to offer," she says. But at least one education expert doesn't want schools spreading the gap-year message. In a study that followed 11,000 members of the high school class of 1992 for eight years after graduation, Stefanie DeLuca, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University, found that, all things being equal, those who delayed college by a year were 64% less likely to complete a bachelor's degree than those who didn't. DeLuca did not say whether these students voluntarily started college late, but at the very least, her work indicates that taking a gap year doesn't guarantee success. "I'm not going to say that time off does not have benefits," says DeLuca. "But I think we should not be so enthusiastic." What's the author's attitude towards gap years?
Sceptical. Positive. Disapproving. Objective.