After four years at high-powered Concord Academy, 18 year old Katie Mygatt knows one thing: she needs to cool down. She hasn't lost her childhood dream of someday being a doctor. But no way is Mygatt going to college right away. The relentless intellectual demands of her Massachusetts private school were already getting to her by the spring of junior year. "I was burned out from too much work and academic pressure," she says. "It was scary." A few months of hiking and tending farm animals in Vermont helped, but only temporarily. "I returned to Concord in the fall, took AP physics and calculus, and the pressure began all over again," she recalls. "My academic drive dropped to zero."

Should she quit school? Not when there's a smarter option. Like a growing number of stressed-out American students, Mygatt decided to take a 'gap year,' learning outside the classroom for a change. Students unwind while teaching English in the Himalayas or assisting at rural health clinics in Central America. In Britain, a year off before college is almost routine; Prince William himself spent 2000-01 trekking, working and tackling menial chores in the Serengeti and other exotic climes. Lately the idea has spread to the U.S. Out of 80 students in Mygatt's graduating class, eight are taking a gap year, and about 20 others said they 'seriously considered' it. "Most kids benefit from this experience," says Peter Jennings, Concord's director of college counseling. "College is wasted on the young."

Wasted is also how many of them feel by the time they get there. Making it into America's top schools can be a long ordeal. Princeton University's letter to prospective applicants for the class of 2006 suggests taking a year off before entering. All they have to do is ask for deferred admission. "I've been recommending that students think about this for many years now," says Dean Fred Hargadon.

"Kid's are exhausted," says Alice Purington, director of college counseling at Andover in northeastern Massachusetts "They've been programmed and pushed since they were wee tykes."

You don't have to be rich to take a gap year. Gail Reardon runs Taking Off (www.takingoff.net) a counseling and placement service for gappers. She says that many of them cover expenses by working, economizing and plain old roughing it. A lot of internships pay at least a little money. "I recommend to all my clients that part of their year be spent working to help pay for their experiences," she says. "This is a year about real life."

And how. "l was afraid my year off would put me behind my peers in college," says Steve Porter, now a premed at Princeton. "That didn't happen at all. In many ways, I feel ahead." He taught English in Nepal, interned at a medical clinic in his hometown of Albany, N.Y, and participated in marine mammal research in Hawaii. Liza Jeswald milked goats and learned the art of bee keeping in New Zealand. "I met an amazingly diverse assortment of people," she says. "It gave me confidence and drive." She's going to Antioch College.

Taking Off helped Mygatt find several promising gap-year jobs. Her top choice was a 12-week stint at Frontier Nursing Service in the hills of Kentucky. Volunteers can spend two days a week helping with office work and three days accompanying doctors or midwives on their rounds in Appalachia. She also considered medical internships in Panama and Nicaragua. "I hope to get down and dirty-really see medical stuff and reach out to people who need help," she says. "I'd also like to figure out if I want to pursue my childhood dream." A good question. She could spend 40 years in a classroom without ever learning the answer.