"The gap year may be a solution for some students to grow socially and emotionally, to gain maturity, or to get a stronger financial footing...Even decades ago people took gap years for a variety of reasons... According to data from the freshman class of 2015, 2.2 percent of students in the U.S. took a gap year before college... By contrast, 15 percent of Australian students and over 50 percent of students from Norway, Denmark, and Turkey took gap years. Students participated in a variety of activities including work, service, travel, and learning a new language."