This gap year is a waste of your valuable time and money

I spent a semester in Aardvark's Tel Aviv program and it left me feeling let down and lied to. The program looks great on paper - college courses, internships, and weekly trips around Israel sound like a thrilling and productive way to spend a semester or two. Unfortunately, this isn't true.

The classes:
Most of the classes are taught poorly with seemingly random structure, and all of the classes are basic to the point where it is insulting to call them college level courses. They are freshman year of high school level.
The Hebrew classes are the most atrocious - regardless of what level you are in, you will be faced with Hebrew teachers who spend only about half of the allotted class time teaching Hebrew, while the other half is spent on lessons that are simple and meandering, and the end result is a bunch of students who walk away without having learned little (if any) new Hebrew from when they began. Also, three teachers for Aardvark quit during the fall 2019 semester, which in itself is concerning.

The internship:
The internship aspect of the program is a bit like a lottery. There is one internship coordinator for the whole Tel Aviv program and one for the Jerusalem program. They are hardworking and really care about all of their students, but not all students will land good internships. They only hired one person for this job per city, and while Aardvark boasts that they have a large quantity of internships to choose from, this is misleading. When the semester started, many of these options declared that they would not be accepting any interns this term, and several dozen students were left without an internship for the first 1 to 4 weeks of the program. Some people were very happy with their internship, but be warned that the results vary greatly.

The weekly trips (tiyuls):
The weekly trips were hit or miss. Some were truly wonderful, most were incredibly boring. It is worth noting that not all of the tiyuls are field trips, I'd say only about a quarter of the total trips fit this description. For the most part, these consist of visits to nearby museums, or a day of lectures, or simply a day off - meaning no activities planned whatsoever. I'd say there were about five trips that were genuinely fun and engaging. You could possibly have more fun trips packed into a ten day birthright program if you haven't done birthright yet (this program will invalidate your ability to since it is 4+ months in Israel).
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Here's the main bright spot amidst an otherwise abysmal program: The madrichim (counselors). All of the counselors in Aardvark Tel Aviv genuinely care about their students and work hard to try and help their students have fun. I love all of the Tel Aviv madrichim. It is worth noting that there are more mixed reviews for the Aardvark Jerusalem madrichim. There is one madrich in particular who many find unprofessional, inappropriate, and cruel. People tend to dislike most of the others as well.
Other than the madrichim, the other staff members clearly care about bringing the best program possible to the students. The director of education is a really really great guy who is trying his hardest to patch up all the holes of the sinking ship that is Aardvark.
I really like talking to all the staff members I've interacted with, they're wonderful people and they're doing their best, but this can't fix the fact that the experience provided to students is substandard at best, and false advertising at its worst.

If you care at all about having educational, engaging, or meaninful experiences during your gap year, this is not the program for you.