Siddharth Mohan Roy | Senior Admissions Consultant
In Part 1, I told you to take your own laps and run your own race. But what if I know that I run on a smaller tank? Do I still push? At some point you need to stop, or the road makes you stop. I am talking about facing a reality (not a roadblock!), and that reality is a gap year.
Facing the Reality of a Gap Year
There’s a stigma around what I am trying to describe, but my aim is not to address why this stigma exists. I am talking about something else: why you should take a gap year. You’re on the lap, but you can’t deal with a lot, and that’s what I call taking a calculated pause. A gap year, if I could define it, means this: I really want something, and I am going to try my ultimate best to achieve it, not because I don’t have the capability, but because I like not to be rushed. Again, I am not trying to say those who push through everything while still in school are not ready. I commend you for managing it all! But maybe, if you are someone whose exhaustion has already kicked in, you could have felt a little less drained if you knew exactly how much fuel you had left before you decided how hard to push.
Weighing the Trade-Offs: Risks vs. Benefits
However, taking a gap year is not easy because there are rade-offs. On the risk side: you lose a year of momentum that your peers are still running on. Some of them will get their offers and move on while you’re still preparing. Staying motivated for a year without the structure of school or the pressure of an imminent deadline is genuinely hard, and it’s easy to let a gap year become a gap two years if you don’t have a plan for it. On the benefit side: you get to walk into UCAT, personal statements, and interviews with far less running in the background at the same time. You get to actually rest before you push again, instead of pushing on empty. And for a lot of students, the extra year means a more deliberate application rather than one assembled while five other laps were happening at once.
Before taking a gap year, share your thoughts with your close ones, your advisors, people who actually know you. Sometimes you don’t really need a gap year at all, and it’s important to seek advice before you decide. But do know that, at the end of it, it’s also important to take ownership of the decision yourself. The process is scary, but you should be clear in your own head about why you’re doing it. However, this is the part that actually matters most, and it’s also the hardest to be honest with yourself about.
Ask yourself:
- What stage are you actually at?
- Can you genuinely do better with more time,
- or are you just tired right now and assuming more time will fix it?
A lot goes into that answer, your energy, your results so far, how much is actually still missing versus how much just feels unfinished because you’re exhausted.
Making the Gap Year Work: Mindset and Avoiding Drift
Now, if you do decide to take a gap year, it’s important to have a good mindset. Mindset literally means the attitude or outlook you bring to any task, and what matters is having a mindset with a plan behind it. A gap year works when you know what you’re using the extra time for, whether that’s retaking a test, strengthening your personal statement, gaining more clinical or work exposure, or simply giving your grades room to properly reflect what you’re capable of. Similarly, you shouldn’t enter a gap year as an escape from the pressure without a plan for what happens once the pressure lifts. A gap year without direction just delays the same laps you were trying to get through, and by the time you’re back, you can end up feeling like you lost time rather than used it.
The biggest risk in a gap year isn’t the year itself, it’s getting distracted inside it. Without the built-in structure of school terms and deadlines, it’s very easy for a gap year to drift. So know yourself well enough going in to notice the moment it starts happening, and pull yourself back before a calculated pause turns into just… pausing.
At the end of the day, this is still your race. Some of you will run every lap back to back without stopping, and that’s genuinely commendable. Some of you will need to pull over, refuel, and get back on track a lap behind everyone else. Neither one is the wrong way to finish! You’re still finishing!
