The Gap Year: Good Idea or Bad for Your Teen?

All the cool kids are doing it.

While that may not quite be true, the concept of a "gap year" got a big lift recently, when the White House announced that Malia Obama would be taking a gap year before attending Harvard University. Ever since, the idea of the gap year, that months-long break between high school and college, has received a lot of positive press. But does that mean your teenager should do it?

More and more college freshmen do appear to be taking gap years. According to the American Gap Association, a nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon, surveys have shown that fewer than 1 percent of college-admitted freshmen take a gap year, but the numbers have recently been climbing, with currently about 30,000 to 40,000 students opting to take the break annually.

"Typically, we would have 20 to 30 students requesting a gap year, out of an entering class of 1,400 students," says Emily Forbes, a communications director for the University of Denver. "But we've seen that number double in the last two to three years with between 50 to 60 students requesting a gap year."

So back to your teenager. Is the gap year a good idea? Or could it be a big mistake? The answer to both questions is -- yes.

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The pros. You're about to spend a lot of money on college, money you may not have. Even if your kid is financially prepared for higher education, he or she may not be prepared in other ways.

As Kelley Kitley, a mother of four and a psychotherapist in Chicago, says: "Who knows what they want to study at age 18? Most kids are excited to have independence and blow $50,000 partying."

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A gap year might give your kid another year to mature, earn more money for college or gain once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

That last point is a pretty powerful argument in favor of the gap year. After college, most people don't want to take time off. They want to snag that dream job, or begin earning income to pay off that mountain of student debt. So, the thinking goes: Why not travel or volunteer and do some cool stuff now, before you're encumbered by debt and life?

Kelly Durcan, a public relations executive in New York City, says that his 18-year-old daughter graduated from high school in 2014 and wound up enrolling in a gap year program through the High Mountain Institute, in Leadville, Colorado.

He says his daughter traveled to places like the Rocky Mountains and with a group of other gap-year peers, "worked to clean hiking trails, close off ghost trails and do other service work," Durcan says. "They also spent weeks at a time in the mountains and participated in a trail half-marathon in Utah and hiking tours in all the areas they visited."

Afterward, Durcan's daughter worked for a few weeks in a New York law firm and then in France on a farm through a nonprofit called World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. From there, she served as a volunteer teacher in Madrid for a day care program through an organization called International Volunteer HQ. After returning home, she worked as a camp counselor in the Adirondacks for five weeks. In late August, she will be attending McGill University in Montreal.

Durcan had no problem with his daughter's break from traditional academia. "My wife and I definitely feel this gap year has made her so much more confident, self-assured and if there is such an attribute as 'more worldly,' then she attained that, too," he says.

There's also the option of taking a gap year between college years. Kitley did. "After my freshman year, I took a year to do volunteer work through an Americorps program. I moved to a new city and lived with like-minded young adults. I learned business skills, public speaking, organizing and leading. I earned a $4,500 scholarship after 10 months of service and went back to Chicago to attend a state school and study social work."

The time spent away doesn't seem to have hurt Kitley, who has a master's in social work and her own private practice.

The cons. If your teenager's gap year isn't well thought out, trouble could arise.

As Ann Marie Klotz, dean of campus life for the New York Institute of Technology's Manhattan location puts it: "In my experience, a gap year is a privilege afforded to more affluent students. Many students who work after graduating high school in hopes of saving for college never actually go to college."

Of course, there's always the fear that your teenager is going to wind up on the sofa for the next 12 months, watching TV and playing smartphone games.

"A gap year is like college -- you can waste it on lazy drunkenness or use it for something useful," says Arvin Vohra, a District of Columbia-based education consultant and author of "Lies, Damned Lies, and College Admissions."

Vohra is a fan of gap years, however, and says that a kid who lacks the discipline for a gap year probably lacks the discipline for college.

Still, Klotz notes that students just out of high school "benefit tremendously from the structure and environment of a freshman year experience."

Jim McClellan, dean of liberal arts for Northern Virginia Community College's Alexandria campus agrees, and isn't crazy about gap years. "It leads to a loss of momentum," he says.

He suggests spending a year in a college's foreign exchange program instead. It isn't quite a gap year, but it can offer amazing life experiences.

"Spending the junior year abroad is a better idea, since no academic momentum is lost and the experience of living and studying abroad is of incalculable value," McClellan says. "Plus, with two years of college completed and added maturity, the junior year abroad is more meaningful than a gap year."

If your teen is determined to do a gap year, plan for it, and ideally, help ensure he or she spends the senior year of high school applying for colleges. Then ask for a year's deferment upon admission, which was the path Durcan's daughter took.

As Forbes says about the University of Denver, "We're almost always willing to approve that deferment because we feel it is a beneficial experience for students to take that time to travel, volunteer, pursue an athletic endeavor ... "

[See: 12 Frugal Ways to Save on Vacation.]

But, Forbes adds, most of the students the university defers appear to be working with an organization that provides structure versus going it alone.

Moral of the story? If teens are prepared to make the most of it, a gap year can afford opportunities for genuine self-growth and success ahead.

If it's squandered, or things don't go as planned, teens may someday look back on that year as a true gap -- 12 months of life they wish they could have back.