Ellie Park, Senior Photographer

The COVID-19 pandemic unsettled the expectation of completing Yale in four years, as it became more common to take a semester, a year or more off.

Over 300 students in the class of 2025 were originally admitted to the class of 2024 in the 2019-20 school year, just before the pandemic hit. The first-year class that began in 2020 had only 1,267 students, while the first-year class that began in 2021 had 1,789, according to data from the admissions office.

Luke Tillitski ’25, who was initially admitted to the class of 2023 and took the first of his two gap years in the 2020-21 academic year, said he has generally observed that “people who took a COVID gap do not regret it.” He added, “There are some people who didn’t take a COVID gap who do regret it.”

Professor Jorge Torres, who was the dean of Pierson College from 2020 to 2022, wrote in an email to the News that the impact of COVID gap years became most apparent when the unusually large class of first years arrived in the fall of 2021.

“The deans, heads, staff, and especially those students, such as FroCos, who work directly with first-years, had to collaborate especially closely to make sure all students were well supported,” Torres wrote.

Current graduating students took gap years for various reasons, some unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Julia Grobman ’25, a softball player, was admitted to the class of 2023 but took two separate gap years — one to preserve her athletic eligibility during the pandemic and another in 2023. For her second gap, she transferred to the University of Pittsburgh for both “personal and athletic reasons” and completed one academic year there, she said. She decided to reinstate at Yale in 2023, knowing she would have to repeat her junior year.

Grobman, a cognitive science major, struggled to keep lab jobs amid pandemic uncertainty and her frequent moves. The extra time as an undergraduate did, however, give her more time to figure out her passions.

“Especially when my life felt like it was moving quite fast at that time, both the pandemic and my gap year allowed me to slow down and investigate my academic likes and dislikes,” Grobman said.

Tillitski spent his first year at Yale until students stayed home after spring break due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tillitski completed the rest of the academic year on Zoom, and his experience with the difficulty of virtual school prompted him to take a gap year.

“I loved my first year at Yale, and I wanted to try to preserve that kind of experience,” he said. “I didn’t think I was gonna be able to have that experience in a COVID setting.”

Tillitski took another gap year, to tour with the Whiffenpoofs a capella group, from 2023-24. He believes the decision to take a gap year depends on the person and emphasized the need to maintain financial stability during a gap year.

“Taking a gap year can be disruptive and difficult to support,” Tillitski said.

In his gap year during COVID, he worked virtually for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and coached debate for the Taipei American School in Taiwan. He lived with friends who were also taking gap years in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then in Philadelphia. Given the limitations of lockdowns, they wanted to live in places with access to outdoor activities like hiking, Tillitski said.

Tillitski does not regret his decision to gap, although he said he feels that he missed out on graduating alongside his classmates. However, he said that the downside was mitigated by Yale’s accommodations.

“Yale did a really good job of giving COVID gaps grace,” Tillitski said. “I was sort of considered a ’23 and a ’24 at the same time. I got to go to all the ’23 events when I was just a ’24 so it didn’t feel like I was that separated from them.”

In each residential college, about 20 students who gapped are graduating this year, estimated Paul McKinley DRA ’96, Yale College’s senior associate dean of strategic initiatives and communications.

He noted that the greater number of students has caused only minor changes to commencement planning.