Program Reviews

Gap Year Solutions, owned by Katherine Stievater, was simply an amazing choice for our family and for my daughter's gap year. Katherine is a very experienced gap year consultant and knows the top programs for her students. Katherine took the time to get to know my daughter and met with her several times throughout the year to help my daughter select the gap year programs that were the best for her and to tailor the gap year to my daughter's needs and interests. Katherine recommended top quality programs that we would never had been able to find ourselves. I cannot say enough wonderful things about Katherine and Gap Year Solutions. Hiring Gap Year Solutions was the best decision our family could have made and was worth every penny!

Katherine is very helpful and she is with you every step of the way. She was very good at helping me map out my entire gap year ensuring that it was one of the best experiences of my life. She is very knowledgeable on many amazing gap year programs and will set you up with different calls to help you gauge which program will be the best fit. She is also a great communicator and will always answer your texts wherever you may be in the world. I would definitely recommend using her to help map out your gap year!

Katherine was extremely helpful and encouraging while helping me plan my gap year. She provided lots of insight and encouragement, and really helped create a unique and personalized experience for me. Her expertise was clear with how much detail and information she had on ways to plan my gap year. Not only did she just provide information, but she also provided her own thoughts after visiting in person a variety of programs herself. She went above and beyond and even now continues to check in on me and hear about what I’m up to now.

Katherine helped our family navigate exciting and important gap year decisions. What I appreciated most is that she put the student in the driver's seat, letting the have agency over decisions. Katherine supported our student's growth and boosted her confidence along the way. Our child's gap year experience altered who she has become in seemingly innumerable positive ways.

In today's world of insane college admissions, a gap year provides opportunities for personal growth outside the bubbles our kids have lived in through high school. Students gain perspective and maturity that serves them well throughout college and beyond.

As a parent of an 18-year-old student who completed her gap year in 2022-2023, I highly recommend Gap Year Solutions - which provided ongoing, expert consulting to my daughter during her gap year. This consulting helped her identify multiple suitable gap year programs and local job possibilities, and make great choices. As a result, she emerged well-prepared for independent, dorm-based living and to choose a college major in which she is now thriving. The periodic consulting calls (most with the student, some with parents) helped keep my daughter on track and helped boost her confidence in herself and her college path.

Taking a gap year was the most difficult, and best decision of my life. Working with Katherine Stievater was a big part of why it was the best decision. I knew I wanted some sort of travel trip, and Katherine laid out multiple options that fit my interests. The ARCC Pacific Northwest trip itself fulfilled every one of my desires. I traveled to the most beautiful parts of the country while simultaneously building relationships with other students. I had the opportunity to work in a group every day and take on a leadership role. Learning from my gap year turned me into the person I am today and is something all students should consider. As a college student, I have talked about my gap year in every interview I've been in because it was that meaningful of an experience. Working with Katherine was an absolute pleasure and critical to my gap year's success.

Coming out of high school I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Taking a gap year seemed like a good idea but I had no idea where to start. Thankfully I found Gap Year Solutions because otherwise I wouldn’t have known what to do. Katherine Stievater helped me so much through my gap year. She helped me make a list of things I’d want to do during the year, helping me have a plan. She also looked for and recommended gap year programs for me. Katherine took what I found interesting and recommended programs that would fit me. Without her I wouldn’t have found the two programs I went on. I had the best experiences of my life during my gap year. Without Katherine it would have been a very different year.

Katherine was really helpful throughout my gap year. She helped me find programs that I might be interested in, she helped me stay organized and stay on track during the year. Without Katherine I don’t think I would have found the programs I went on and I don’t think my year would have been as successful. She helped me follow my interests and find programs that actually resonated with me. Even in between programs she helped me stay on track. She had me make a dream list of things I’d like to do or learn. That helped me focus on specific things to do during my time. Katherine was extremely helpful in making my gap year an amazing experience.

Katherine's help was fabulous in helping my son plan his Gap year, which was last-minute due to Covid. With the unpredictability of Covid, Katherine helped us navigate which programs she felt were likely to go forward (some got cancelled!) and set up meetings so my son could assess and choose. Her one-on-one conversations with him helped him figure out what he was looking for, and her good humored prodding helped him complete the interviews and applications.
After the semester program was over, she made suggestions to help him find work (also difficult during Covid!), and before he went to school he did a road trip with friends from the gap year program, which Katherine encouraged. Overall, his gap year was a great mix of amazing experiences and hard work, and when he went to school after the gap year he was much more mature and motivated. I was skeptical that his grades would be better after being out of school for so long, but they were excellent and he was even able to transfer to the business school because of it.
All of us, including our son, think a gap year was a fantastic decision, and Katherine was instrumental in making it the success it was.

Gap Year Solutions helped to shape my gap year in so many ways. Firstly, Katherine has been a huge help during the whole process; from discussing my interests in detail, to reaching out to programs to find the ones best suited to me, she has made sure that I would get the best experience possible, and one that would suit my needs perfectly. I not only figured out which programs I would go to, but I also learned so much about myself in the process of working with Katherine. We wrote down what we discussed during each meeting, which helped me plan more efficiently what the next step in my gap year journey would be. I would 100% recommend working with Katherine, as she has been such a huge part of making sure my gap year ran smoothly.