Questions about college scholarships?

Taking a year of college questions?

• Hey, I am wondering the pros and cons of taking a year off before college, not for me, but for a friend of mine. I've been in a band for about a year. Recently we participated in a Battle of the bands, just a small local one, we won it, and really didn't know what we had fully done. Shortly afterward we started getting calls from coffee shops and bars asking us to play for them. Because we all have different things we do in school right now, we haven't been able to do a lot of them, but we're still getting offers left and right. The biggest thing we're getting right now is questions about a CD and compliments. We're starting recording for our first CD on Monday april 5th. We started seriously looking at taking a year off after high school and touring, selling our CD and playing at places around the country. The lead singer/guitarist and the lead guitarist are kind of hesitant - mostly the lead guitarist. They both have quite a bit going for them academically and have been accepted to pretty good colleges and are concerned about scholarship offers. They are concerned that if they take a year off they will lose scholarships they could get if they went straight into college. They also don't think it will be easy at all to get scholarships after taking a year off. It's not a big deal for me because my plan for further education is technical college for Diesel Mechanics. The tech school I've chosen doesn't offer any scholarships that I would have to worry about if deciding to take a year off. I was reading about "gap-year" programs, but they sounded like they we're only for people that wanted to study abroad or travel. Could someone clear this up for us? I REALLY want to take a year off and tour with the band because I think it will be a really good experience. I also have the mindset that society pushes the individual to go to grade school - high school - college - job - married - kids - retirement - die.. I want at least one year when I can say I did something for myself.

• Answer:

  Just remember that about half of the people who take a gap year never go to college. And you can still play in a band, at least locally while you were in college. Mick Jagger still went to the London School of Economics while the Rolling Stones were starting up.