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[quote=Anonymous]OP, I'm writing from a different but related vantage point.  I'm not trying to make this all about myself, but I'm also hoping the story below might help parents dealing with a child's mental/physical health interfering with attending college.

I graduated from high school almost thirty years ago, and very few people were taking 'gap years.'  I had to take such a year, though, because I spent the final two months of senior year with crippling anorexia and two hospitalizations by graduation time.

Before the hospitalizations,  I'd been accepted to two excellent private schools in North Carolina, and I ended up deferring admission to one of those two.  I also tried (and didn't succeed) taking courses during the 'gap year 's community college and a public university in my hometown, but was too ill too mentally and physically ill and so withdrew from both of those within several weeks of starting.  I also ended up being hospitalized again that same year, right when my friends were starting their college educations.

Ultimately, I got a reasonably good job during that year.  And ultimately, in late April of that same gap year, I realized I'd chosen the 'wrong' college to attend, so I was hugely lucky and relieved when my other choice, which I"d rejected a year earlier, was kind enough to re-grant me admission for the upcoming year.  (For example and as an analogy, if I were talking about Philadelphia-area schools, I got accepted to both Penn and Swarthmore. I told Penn yes -- if I could defer my admission for a year, I"d love to attend.  I told Swarthmore thank you but I've decided to go to Penn.  I later changed my mind and so the following April, I called Swarthmore and asked if I could attend, after all, and be readmitted, and they said 'yes.')

I graduated from the college four years later, having to take off one quarter when I became ill again and having another hospitalization after the first year.  But I made it.  And then I made it to earn a Ph.D. and to have an extremely successful career, a great marriage (to a guy I met in college), and a wonderfully healthy late-in-life baby -- salient here because doctors feared I had compromised my fertility with the anorexia and bulimia that came along, too, during college.  Best of all, the eating disorder days are long behind me.

I'm sharing this only to say I know it absolutely sucks for your daughter and it must be so hard for you to bear, too, but it can all work out well in the end.  Sometimes, those kinds of stories can help; I hope this one does. I hope, most of all, that you and she can see the sunshine through the many gray days that are here right for her.  Best of luck to you both, always.[/quote]

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