Gap Year

More and more universities appreciate students who take a gap year before starting their studies. For a few decades now, Harvard University - to give a notorious example - has been encouraging students to defer admission and take a gap year.

A well spent gap year can be a fantastic opportunity to learn something new, it can be beneficial to personal growth, and can have decisive impact on your career choice and prospects. Taking a year to meaningfully explore life outside school, to travel, volunteer, learn a new language, or work in a field you are curious about - can be life-changing.

We encourage our students to consider a gap year and to plan it carefully. In the class of 2017 almost half of the students took a gap year. These are some of the activities recent ISHR students are engaged in: working in local schools, kindergartens, or sport organizations as part of a Voluntary Year of Social Service (Freiwilliges Soziales Jahr), teaching English in Hanoi, learning Spanish in Santiago de Chile, learning French in Lyon, learning German in Aachen, working on an organic farm in New Zealand, teaching children with disabilities in Hannover, interning at a start-up in Copenhagen, carrying social work in Sodwana Bay, and backpacking in Laos and Thailand.