Article Source: The Daily Camera

Monika Lutz -- after opening rejection letters from her top college choices, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University -- has decided to delay her formal education and take a self-planned global field trip instead of enrolling at a school in her second-choice tier. The high honors student, who will be graduating from Fairview on May 23, has been lining up internships across the world for her "gap year," a common practice among European students that is enticing more American teenagers.

Gap-year students use their time to volunteer, study abroad, participate in internships, or work to save money for their higher education, instead of taking the linear path from high school to college. Every year at the University of Colorado, about 150 to 200 students, mostly incoming freshmen, request to defer their enrollment.

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