Gap Year Vs. 100% Online as Wharton Undergrad Freshman
I'm an incoming undergraduate freshman at Wharton, which just went 100% online, and I'm strongly considering a gap year. Going completely online seems like a waste of tens of thousands of dollars, especially when building a network of friends (and to be honest, just having fun) is such a huge part of college.
The main issue is that COVID severely limits the opportunities available to me as a high school graduate, and I worry that a gap year with whatever experience I can scrounge up will hurt me during recruiting for IB. I live with my mom and dad, who are both high risk, meaning I can't be in and out of the house. I figure I can read a lot, take some online classes (through coursera or the like) and do a coding bootcamp, but that still doesn't really fill a year.
Additionally, I don't know if Wharton hurts or helps me: will the name make up for an underwhelming gap year or will I come off as lazy compared to my fellow students? Should I take a gap year, and, if yes, what should I spend it doing? If no, what's the best way to make friends and network without setting foot on campus? Thanks for your help!
I'm taking a gap semester after my freshman year of college this fall. It's gonna look weird, but online college is worthless to me. I was lucky and got a good internship, but even if you can't, I'd definitely recommend taking a gap year. Just find something semi-meaningful or fun to do, and then if it ever comes up you can give one sentence like "yeah, I didn't want to do online classes so I learned python and Java."
But even if you do jack shit, it's almost certain nobody will care at all. Kids take gap years all the time, and nobody cares. Now there's a pandemic and classes are online, so I'd guess people will care even less, most likely not at all.
TLDR: Take a gap year, nobody will care and online classes suck
absolutely take a gap year
look into WWOOFing during your gap year. I have to imagine that farm life is not all that different w/ COVID going on. I see little downside to doing a gap year if you know what you're interested in (as evidenced by posting this on WSO) + are a good enough student to get into Wharton (beyond boredom but spending a year taking online classes seems boring as well). The extra yr of maturity + growing up is valuable and hopefully we are back to a mostly normal world by next fall
I’ve done some work on a farm and it is hard work but fulfilling.
Planting potatoes, harvesting squash, harvesting cabbage, picking up 120 chicken eggs per day, giving hay to the sheep, cleaning the cow barn, and others would milk the cows and make cheese. They slaughtered the sheep and cows for food as well.
Also, we had tomatoes and apples.
The cows would typically come if you called them by name.
They had two Clydesdale horses - massive creatures - but we didn’t really do anything with those. And there was an alpaca with the sheep to discourage predators.
I can’t imagine someone penalizing a student for taking a gap year in 2020, especially since universities haven’t reduced tuition (or at least not significantly).
Frankly, would you want to work for someone who cares so much about a linear path they’re completely inflexible in a global pandemic, insane tuition costs, and limited opportunities for remote learning?
I’m a big believer in online learning myself, but a school like Wharton has a lot of value in, as you mentioned, networking.
FWIW I’m in the tech space, not finance, so I can’t truly speak to what a hiring decision maker in IB would think.
I'd do a gap year in a second. Noone will judge you
The value in college is honestly really in the networking and socializing.
Paying full price for an online experience at an elite university just feels like a waste
I wouldnt take a gap year. shitty time to travel plus online exams will likely be easier. I say start asap and take advantage of a shitty cycle in employment. best time to be in school is during a down economy imo.
Oh that’s a good point. It’s expensive, but online school = better GPA.
Would you still be able to attend Wharton even if you took a gap year? I wouldn't let people here make that decision for you, but either way you should really not let the year go to waste, like what are you going to do? Work full-time stocking groceries? You can still network during virtual, you're still a Wharton student. Yeah not being able to make friends sucks but everyone is in the same boat here. I highly doubt the people taking gap-years are doing anything useful, it's just lazy. But if money is a barrier then that changes things, you can always reach out to the financial aid office and negotiate or go in person, I had tons of success doing that recently and got way more scholarship money. Just my .02.
Disagree. If you just sit at home and twiddle your thumbs, it is time wasted, but if you got into Wharton then I doubt you are the type of person to sit around and waste time. Not sure how one could argue that people taking a gap year are lazy? Maybe if they never go back to school, but don't think that is a concern for OP.
Also would note that while everyone else starting college in the fall is going through this, if the world is closer to normal in 2021, then you will have (all else equal) a better college experience with four years on campus than those who started in 2020. As long as you can find something productive to do (even if that is volunteering or something) then it seems like a good decision to me. I am biased as I took a gap year and consider it to be one of my best decisions (feel free to PM me OP) but IMO this year being virtual is a great reason to take one.
Bump
Gap year. Tons of friends took (non-Covid) gap years when we graduated HS and none of them have had any stigma associated with it / difficulty getting back into the groove of things – many ended up in finance incl IBD. Start a startup, volunteer at a nonprofit, travel with your friends – it'll be dope
The only advantage to online college is that, unless you literally have to take the exam on web-cam, it's very easy to cheat.
But you're basically paying full tuition for entry level gen-ed classes, which, in my opinion, is absolutely retarded.
Coding bootcamps can absolutely fill a year. If you go on DataCamp and look at the huge amount of shit they have for both Python and R, you'd be surprised. If you started designing some of your own strategies in quantmod which is an R package (not sure if you are 100% on IB or still considering other stuff like S&T, AM etc) then you'd have plenty to do. And that's just 1 site also. When you actually start investing time into what it is that you want to do, it takes time. Coding, gym, maybe you want to already prep for your thesis so you can make up for the gap year.
It is still somewhat possible that the rona will start subsiding in the next few months when we get these vaccines out. Moderna just got a $1.5 billion award for 100 million doses, so is it within the realm that the next semester is online, but the one after that is somewhat close to normal? I'd say so.
I personally wouldn't take the gap year. I'm heading into my second year masters and it's clear that I'm not learning as much (I don't particularly care for the other stuff since there's not much of it in the country that I'm in), but if I opted to postpone anything then I'd be even further behind the pack.
If you take your gap year, you can definitely still go to Wharton next year? If so, then I’d go for it. I’m not sure you can though, but I don’t know too much about taking gap years.
I go to a different ivy and would recommend doing online school.
Like everyone else has said, online school is pretty easy. On top of cheating, there’s also 0 distractions if you’re living at home, so you should absolutely be able to pull a 4.0.
So let’s say you’re able to finish freshman year with a 4.0, going into IB recruiting sophomore year, you’ll be in a phenomenal position to land a great job. Lots of freshman in college get too into partying and socializing and end up digging themselves into a hole GPA wise, so I wouldn’t discount how big of an impact an easy 4.0 freshman year can have.
Yeah definitely agree.
Ivy League schools are some of the easiest places to get good grades on this planet. Do you really need it to be easier?
How are you all finding online school easier? I am finding it to be more difficult (because I can't ask teachers more questions). The exams aren't materially easier then before, sometimes even harder. I'm learning material like usual.
A few things-
Lectures are all recorded, so it’s much easier to go back through if there’s a concept that confuses me. My attendance was also always less than perfect, so I’m now able to rewatch a class if I miss it.
Lots of classes are shifting from exams to things like projects or essays, which makes things a lot easier.
Cheating is very easy. I haven’t been working with other kids on exams because that seems super risky, but just glancing at my notes or googling is huge if I need it during a test.
There are 0 distractions. At school, I’m always tempted to go out drinking, fuck around with my roommates, or just go do something. Now I’m stuck at home and can barely leave the house, so it’s really easy to just clamp down in my room and grind on school. Extracurriculars are also basically nonexistent, which frees up a bunch of time.
I didn't have perfect attendance either, but I used to cross reference with YouTube so I haven't gained anything on that front.
My courses still have exams like normal semesters. These exams are proctored through some sort of online proctoring system.
For your last point, I've found it harder to focus because there is 0 fun time. I like to have a balance, and have been unable to.
We are in wildly different boats but I am an MBA considering the same thing.
Post on another topic: ------------
Also a Wharton 2021 (originally) here, aka a rising second year. Specific complaints, outside of the terrible communication re. remote+ -> full remote?
This is especially funny since our new dean specializes in crisis communications
Also, I am another IB -> PE -> MBA -> PE. Am I crazy for highly considering a gap year? Feels like the last chance in our life to do it.
we should get a crew to travel together (once things open up? currently turkey and mexico are wide open). We will be a weird crew with a variety of ages / backgrounds, and I have an idea to stack a couple resumes without actually doing too much
EDIT: I've done the virtual casses during the end of last year, they are garbage
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