I am new to mumsnet and hope someone can shed some light on this. My Yr 12 DS is hoping to apply for Medicine and is thinking the more traditional schools including possibly at Oxford or Cambridge London. He is keen to take a gap year to travel/ earn money. I think this would be a great idea as he is one of the youngest in his year and would like to apply this year for deferred entry in 2015 so that he is not constrained by interviews etc during his gap year (ideally- he may not get in anywhere of course).
There seems to be a lot of conflicting evidence about how Unis view deferred entry, e.g. Oxford states they are fine with gap years, but this years stats showed that none of the applications for deferred entry were successful. King's College stated during a webinar that they would not usually give out deferred offers, but did generally agree to defer a direct offer later on in the year, which is confusing. Lots of places say they are "neutral" about plans for gap years but I'm concerned he'll be putting himself at a big disadvantage and a lot of stress by applying for deferred entry.
Does anyone have any experience of this? Particularly for Medicine? Many thanks.