My mother wanted me to consider waiting a year to enter college, but I was determined--sure I wouldn't get in the following year, and I had my acceptance. We were both right, in a way. I was very immature socially (long complicated reasons, TMI) and in my first year of college, away from home and the stressors, came unglued--and flunked out. I was right, because if I'd waited a year, there's no way I could have paid the new tuition--and as someone who entered when that university was tuition-free, I was covered if I went back and graduated. So after a year of "reconsidering your educational objectives" (that was their phrase) I went back and did graduate, and have never regretted it. But after college, instead of graduate school, I chose to go in the military and served three years active with the USMC. Then went back and got a second degree and some graduate school.

Financially, going straight to college was a good move--my mother, a single parent, couldn't have paid tuition the other way, nor could I have earned that much. As it was, I got some scholarship help and room & board, and worked part-time. Tuition, it seems, always goes up. And in some ways, flunking out was also beneficial (it made me a much more understanding and better tutor--a way I earned money during my second degree & grad school.) Learning to come back from a hard FAIL is an important life skill, and most of us have that happen at some point. The earlier you learn to deal with it, the better. As immature as I was, I don't think a gap year would have done me much good--I was headed for a problem year no matter what.

The time away from academia after that, though, was definitely the right thing to do (though a woman joining the Marines in 1968 was...an anomaly and my mother's friends were all shocked and horrified.) It got me out of my head and into reality.

So I guess what I'm saying is...every young person is different, and some of them will go their own way regardless--and sometimes that will be the best choice and sometimes it won't, but they have to make it. Finances are always a problem--choices some have aren't available to others--but I don't think there's any hard and fast answer about which is better, gap year or college or straight into a job or creating a business. A smart, hardworking young person can get somewhere good by any of these, especially if they're willing to change course until they find the right one.