The prevalent minhag right now amongst most of the post high school programs in Eretz Yisrael is to have the students stay with them for a year, maybe two years. And then after the two years, they either start university or they move to another, more advanced yeshiva to develop their skills even further. 

At Bircas HaTorah we try to integrate everything as much as possible in the yeshiva experience. What I mean is that we would not necessarily after two years want to send the bochur to a more advanced yeshiva. By design, we wouldn't want to do that, because now he has to start all over again. On the one hand, he is developing at a higher level with more advanced students. But the cost is that he has to start over with new friends and new rabbis. Developing relationships with those rabbis is not an easy thing to do.

So at the yeshiva, if you've already worked for two years to start a process where the talmid is feeling close with his rebbeim and close with his chaveirim, and feels safe with them, then he can start to grow and it's at years, potentially years, three, four or five, where the talmid is also gaining his learning skills by moving to more advanced shiurim in the yeshiva, and maintaining all of those relationships, and building them and getting closer and working on deeper issues that everybody has as they go towards shidduchim - that is the model that Bircas HaTorah has undertaken. It's more similar to the Israeli system.

Usually, if a person goes to an Israeli yeshiva at age 17, he's usually not going to leave that yeshiva until he gets married and goes to Kollel. Maybe he'll leave for periods of time in between for what they call chizuk; they're getting tired of the same situation, so they want to leave the yeshiva for a period and then they come back. But it's really a b’d'eved that the student had to switch yeshivas in the middle because he's in a process of growth and development. That's what we try to do here in Bircas HaTorah as well.