What are the alternative options to deferring university?

If you don’t feel happy with deferring your place at university, there are some other options.

You could just wait a year and apply for university the next year. This may suit you if you are unsure about what course you want to do. Use your year out to gain some experience and clarify what you want to do in your future career.

If you want to take a year out primarily to gain work experience or earn money, you could try looking for a course that incorporates this in the form of sandwich courses or placement years. This is quite common in fields such as engineering or medicine.

Some courses offer the opportunity to travel abroad as part of your course, for example to carry out research. This could be for a semester or even longer.

You could postpone your gap year until after you have completed university. This means you can get your qualification under your belt before you go and don’t have to worry about whether you will have problems getting back into studying after such a long break. This is becoming an increasingly common practice.

Your “gap year” doesn’t have to be a year long! You could use your long summer holidays to travel or volunteer abroad for a few months at a time. The only problem with this could be if you are relying on spending your summer holidays working to save up money to pay for your studying. You could get round this by working abroad though. At least you will be able to experience working in a different country and can spend your time off exploring and making short trips.