Mandy Fyola, 19, is in the midst of her gap year, working at her parents’ helicopter flight school Rotors of the Rockies in Broomfield, Colo.

DENVER — To Mandy Fyola, it seemed like everyone at Eaton High School in northern Colorado had the same advice for departing seniors: Go straight to college — otherwise, life gets in the way, and you may never get your degree.

Like most of her peers, she judged it sound counsel. But as Fyola realized that she had no idea what she wanted to study after graduation, she hatched another plan: the gap year.

Instead of applying immediately to college, she decided to fill the gap between high school and college by working in the family business and figuring out where her interests lie.

“High school is its own little world,” says Fyola, 19, who helps out at Rotors of the Rockies, a helicopter flight school in Broomfield, Colo. “You get out into the adult world, and it’s different. This year has opened my eyes to the world around me.”

That’s the central philosophy behind the gap year, a decades-old concept that more recently has spawned a small industry of counselors and program providers. The idea also has won big fans in college-admissions offices.

Once primarily an option for affluent families that could afford to send their kids trekking across the globe, the gap year now also is viewed as a potentially money-saving oasis as students fine-tune their interests, sock away cash and gain the maturity to squeeze the most out of college.

“On a very practical level, they’re building a résumé before college, a sense of handling themselves in the world,” says Holly Bull, president of the Center for Interim Programs, a New Jersey-based company that has been helping kids bridge the gap year since 1980. “And some things they do can lead to major focus down the line. You can save a lot of time and money taking a gap year.”

‘Aberrations’

When Bull’s father started arranging gap-year activities for students, his clientele came mostly from exclusive private schools — and the term “gap year” hadn’t even been coined. The kids who participated were “aberrations,” Bull says, whereas now the company counsels upward of 250 students a year.

Her clients run the gamut from kids who have learning differences or are simply tired of the classroom to high-achievers bound for top colleges looking for a change to avoid burnout.

“The problems start to show up if somebody hasn’t thought it out, has lots of down time or is not doing enough,” Bull says. “That’s pretty deadly.”

Parents can spend thousands of dollars on gap-year programs — or nothing at all.

Mark Montgomery, who runs an educational-consulting firm in Denver, says there are good options on both ends of the financial spectrum for kids looking to mature and gain a sense of independence before heading off to college.

But if a student decides to stay at home during a gap year, Montgomery suggests writing a contract with parents to set the ground rules and define the trade-off between greater independence, such as relaxed curfew, and obligations, such as contributing to the household finances.

He figures at least 25 percent of his counseling clients consider a gap year, and about 10 to 15 percent follow through.

Avoid distractions

“College has a zillion temptations,” Montgomery says. “Some kids who take a year and then go to college with a little independence don’t head for the nearest keg. And they’re more directed academically because they’ve spent some time thinking and growing up.”

Harvard University officially encourages incoming students to defer enrollment for a year to work or pursue some other activity. Princeton offers a structured “bridge year” that directs students toward public service abroad.

At Colorado College, vice president for enrollment Mark Hatch has seen the number of kids taking a gap year fluctuate between 24 and 40 among an incoming class of more than 500.

He’d like to see those gap numbers double or even triple.

“I’ve never met a kid who’s taken a semester or a year off between high school and college who hasn’t had their priorities in place and been more grounded and focused — more hungry,” he says.

‘Definitive plans’

Of about 21,000 freshman applicants, the University of Colorado gets up to 400 requests for deferred admission — a ratio that has remained fairly stable over the last few years.

“What has changed is much more definitive plans about what a student wants to do during that year,” says director of admissions Kevin MacLennan. The university endorses a gap year if an applicant “demonstrates a good, purposeful reason.”

Jim Rawlins, executive director of admissions at Colorado State University, estimates that roughly 500 of 16,000 students in the current applicant pool graduated from high school a year earlier — not a huge number, but more than he expected and “a great thing.”