I'm filling an online form for background verification from my new company after getting the offer letter.
I have done my engineering for 5years (4years course + 1 year gap). I had a year gap between my second and third year as I had lot of backlogs to clear. Now, I have a textfield where I need to mention the reason for year gap in my education. What positive reason can I give that would not matter much.
Just tell the truth.
"I took a year off after my second year for personal and family reasons."
You don't have to go into details. Just give a brief over view and if you're asked about it in an interview say exeactally what you said here about having a backlog of stuff to clear that prevented you from concentrating on your studies. So you took a year off so your grades wouldn't suffer.
Never lie. It will come back to bite you if you do.
There are many excellent reasons why someone, who has a perfectly valid excuse for it, might NOT want to "tell the whole truth" about a year's gap. There is a bit of nuance here, specifically the acceptance that something which isn't the full truth DOES NOT necessarily constitute a lie or deception.
The reasons might be be personal or perhaps the interviewee doesn't want to be subject to the judgement of a stranger who will smugly decide whether or not the reason was "valid".
Many students get burned out in the middle of their college careers, many want to try something in their life while they're still young. Perhaps "the reason" is embarrassing. Perhaps they had to take time off because of lack of funds.
Unless one is getting a lifestyle screen for a top-secret job, somethings are just too much information in an interview. The risk is that it could be a distraction.
If you're absolutely not comfortable with fully explaining the gap in your college years, just come up with a something vague, albeit explainable. Reasonable people know that students in their teens/twenties are still "on the launchpad" and things don't always go according to plan.
MANY students take a year off, for reasons ranging from medical/personal/family, to needing to earn more money, to needing to decide what the want to do with their lives, to just wanting to spend a year doing something non-academic like hiking the Appalacian Trail from end to end.
If you finished the degree with decent grades, and didn't spend the year doing anything that will massively embarrass your new employer, it really isn't an issue.
(I took a year off before college, and spent it volunteering in a hospital's Biomedical Engineering department, testing and repairing electronics... partly because I'd gotten tired of always being the youngest kid in my grade and wanted to try being one of the older kids for a change.)
I definitely would not tell a blatant lie. Not only is there the ethical question, but if you are caught, lying on a job application is usually grounds for immediate firing.
What do you mean by "having backlogs to clear up"? Backlogs of what?
If you ran out of money, I would be surprised if an employer would hold it against you if you said, "I ran out of money and had to work for a year to earn enough to go back and finish my degree." If I was the employer I'd see that as a positive thing: you worked for everything that you have and you buckled down and did what was necessary to achieve your goals.
If you just got bored with school and decided to take a year off or some such, I'd find a way to word it that sounds positive. Not "I got bored and quit" but "I took a year to travel and learn about the world" or some such.
Was the reason something embarrassing, like you spent the year in prison or you were kicked out of school for cheating or some such? That would be a different category.
