PORTLAND, Ore. — Some college students are getting ready to head back to school in the middle of a pandemic, but others have decided to skip classes this year even though they got in.
Luke Gladen-Kolarsky is one of the students who has decided to take a gap year. He just graduated this spring from Lincoln High School in Portland. He said he’s known since middle school that he wanted to attend college to pursue music.
“I’d kind of been taking the most rigorous classes,” said Gladen-Kolarsky.
He spent a lot of his time in high school preparing to get into college.
“I used to make my life entirely about extracurriculars before COVID hit,” he said. “I’ve always known having a lot of extracurriculars is a plus when applying for colleges.”
He applied to about nine colleges and got in at one of his top choices.
“I am going to go to The New School in Manhattan,” Gladen-Kolarsky said with a huge smile. “It’s exciting.”
But that excitement was short lived because of COVID-19.
“Manhattan is so central. For a while it was like the epicenter of where the virus was and things were so bad there,” he said. “I knew that New York would probably not be the best place to be this coming fall.”
He also realized he wouldn’t be getting the same college social experience, and tuition would be a lot of money to pay for online learning.
“Having done online classes this spring when everything started, I found out that online classes don’t work for me,” Gladen-Kolarsky said.
So this summer, he had to make the tough call to defer this school year. It was a disappointing decision for him.
Julia Surtshin, the independent college counselor and certified educational planner who founded College Ahead, said Gladen-Kolarsky isn’t the only student making that decision.
“Some schools are reporting that up to 20% of their incoming freshman for this year have opted to take a deferral,” Surtshin said, "basically a gap year."
With some students deciding to defer this year, one concern is the potential for fewer spots in the fall of 2021 for now-rising seniors, since that’s when the students who deferred this fall will go back to school.
Meantime, Gladen-Kolarsky said most of his friends are not deferring, but are staying closer to home.
“When you defer, there’s kind of this feeling of being left behind because everyone else is starting school in the fall,” he said.
So for the next year, Gladen-Kolarsky will keep himself occupied.
“I’ve applied for a bunch of jobs. So I’m going to work full time,” he said, and “basically, financially and mentally preparing for going back to school,”
In addition, he said he’s been working on putting enough songs together for an album. It’s been a dream of his for a while.
YouTube playlist: Back to school