Please tell me about your child's gap year.

[FiveHoursSleep]

My DD1 is in Y13 and wants to take a gap year before university next year.
She's planning on studying medicine if she gets in, or nursing if she doesn't and just wants a year off study first, which I think is fair enough.
Her loose plan is to do Camp Canada or America over the summer, come home and work/ do some WE while living at home and then go to Rwanda and volunteer with a programme her school is involved with in Jan/ Feb.
I'd love to hear about other peoples' gap years and hear what your young people got out of the experience and whether they did go on to go to university afterwards.
Or did they change their minds and do something different?

A gap year can be really useful IMO, especially if DC are unsure about their next steps. My DD is thinking about it as although she has excellent grade predictions, she just doesn't know what she wants to study.
DS took one because his predicted grades weren't good enough to allow him to apply to where he wanted to go. He worked as a choral scholar and school assistant 300 miles from home, had an extremely busy but very useful and self-financing year and had 5 unconditional offers at his chosen universities having done much better than predicted at A level.
It worked well for him!

Just bear in mind the interviews. If applying for medicine this year and nursing next then they will have interviews for both. So need to be in the country,