Taking a gap year is a perennially popular option in this country, with an estimated 200,000 people between the ages of 18 and 25 taking time out to volunteer, travel or work each year - and getting involved in activities ranging from hiking Inca trails to volunteering in orphanages.

With a large number of our subscribers choosing to go on gap years, we decided to carry out a survey to ask them about their plans, and what they hoped to get out of it. We also surveyed candidates who had already been on gap years to ask them what the benefits had been for them; and asked candidates who were not going on a gap year, what the reason for their decision was.

As one would expect, we found enormous variety in terms of activities on gap years (although tending to fall into one of the categories of paid work, volunteering and travelling), and in terms of destinations (ranging from the UK to locations all over the world), and in the reasons why students and graduates chose to go on gap years, and the benefits which candidates felt they had gained from doing so.

Respondents were nearly unanimous however in citing their gap year as beneficial to their careers and to their personal development, and in hoping to gain professional and personal skills (or declaring that they had done, if they had been on a gap year in the past).

378 students and graduates answered the poll. In the first part of this report we cover the different activities and destinations of gappers; while in the second we look at the reasons for going and the benefits gained from gap year activities.

First off, we asked whether candidates were planning to go on a gap year in the future, or had already done so, or had decided not to do so for the foreseeable future. In the poll, nearly half (44 percent) of respondents were setting off on their first ever gap year; another two fifths were planning to take another gap year, having already been on at least one. Some 10 percent of respondents had been on a gap year in the past, and were not planning to take another one. Meanwhile, six percent had never been on a gap year, and had decided not to do one in the foreseeable future.