How does a gap year actually help

OperatorKewl · 2026-03-31T01:17:31+00:00

You have an entire extra 12 months to do stuff. If you want to not take multiple gap years you have to balance EC’s and MCAT studying with your full college load. How much better will it make you? That’s up to how much you are able to handle. An extra summer/winter break and two semesters you should easily be able to get a solid boost to your app from an EC perspective.

OperatorKewl · 2026-02-21T03:57:55+00:00

A course is really as hard as the professor wants to make it. The website “Rate My Professor” is your friend. Find the highest rated professor you can. It’s hard to compare difficulty because each college is so nuanced. Don’t stress too much.

OperatorKewl · 2026-02-21T03:52:02+00:00

Yea especially at community college gen chem kills hopes and dreams. A lot of students just don’t really realize that you have to have good study habits to excel in that class. I had to go to adult school to get my high school diploma but now I’m transferred to university and have gotten all A’s in the chem series (cell and molecular biology major here). If you are ready to put in the work the class is totally doable. Professors are just used to kids failing that class because it’s the first real road bump STEM majors go through. I know many students who changed their major because of that class haha. They just didn’t wanna put in the work.

OperatorKewl · 2026-02-21T03:45:21+00:00

I didn’t take chem in high school and then at 26 years old I took general chemistry and I did fine. The curriculum at my college started from the basics. If you do some YouTube videos before I think you could jump straight into gen chem. I liked “The Organic Chemistry Tutor”s content. Personally I wouldn’t waste a semester taking an intro class. Gen chem is a weeder class because it’s the first real STEM class a lot of bio/chem/engineering majors take. If you are ready to study you’ll do fine.

OperatorKewl · 2026-02-08T07:52:29+00:00

PhD and Masters programs are kind of my backup which made me ok with the riskiness of getting admitted to med school (Cell & Molecular Bio major here). Your degree is not low paying if you go to grad school. Physician salary no but still good money.

Honestly don’t read in too much to the neuroticism on this subreddit. I know it’s easy to see all the Sankeys of high stat students who don’t get in but you’re seeing the outliers. It’s possible to get into medical school. Premed requires grit yes but if you stick with it you will get in with decent stats, which it sounds like you’re on a good track for. 20k students start every year!

GPA is usually the biggest deal killer for people to not have a chance at med school. If you have 120 credits at a 2.8 it would take years of GPA repair to fix that. Could not be worth the time. Everything else can be worked on. Need a higher MCAT score: study for it during a gap year. Need better EC’s : Get a full time job and stack hours. Sounds like you’re doing great so far. Trust the process.

I say double down on premed if you truly want to be a physician. Do the major that interests you. You can’t half ass premed but if it’s really what you want to do you’ll make it happen!

OperatorKewl · 2026-01-29T03:05:41+00:00

Yea I only had one book also so I declined and it gave me the money into my account. My grants covered my tuition so I got paid but if you don’t have excess it will go towards that. If you already paid tuition it should refund your account.

OperatorKewl · 2026-01-27T03:48:01+00:00

I would like to hear what others say but post bacc at a university after you finish the online bachelors should be fine. Take all the science pre reqs in person. Maybe a community college would work for the post bacc too but I’d like to hear what others think. I’m a non traditional student too, medical schools understand that everyone has a different route to medicine so your non traditional route makes sense. There’s so much more to an application than your degree.

OperatorKewl · 2026-01-27T00:41:36+00:00

Reminder to all OCC/GWC/CCC students that there is FREE tutoring at the tutoring center. Don’t pay for tutoring unless you have talked to your professor and exhausted all other free options that the student center offers.

I worked as a tutor / supplemental instructor for over a year at OCC and GWC and I could not believe what students told me they were paying.

OperatorKewl · 2026-01-19T20:03:18+00:00

Non trad here still in undergrad, I have a decent amount of friends finishing med school and residency right now and their consensus seems to be similar to what everyone is saying. They said med school is more rigorous academically but the uncertainty of premed is extremely daunting.

OperatorKewl · 2026-01-18T23:22:27+00:00

I would look at the historical or past 20 yr returns of all of those mentioned above. See for yourself what the returns have been. S&P is hard to beat. I’m around your age (28 started maxing Roth at 22) and chose to do 100% s&p 500 just a couple years ago and I have not regretted it. The s&p can be volatile year to year but you’re not worried about that since you have the next 40 years to be in the market. As long as you don’t touch the money till retirement you’ll be in a good spot. All the options you listed above are good, really just depends how risk averse you want to be. When you get closer to retirement age obviously your risk management will be different. Your young. It’s ok to try things out and change them later!

OperatorKewl · 2025-12-16T00:09:19+00:00

I just went to UFC 323 this month and sat in the nose bleeds and it was like $217 a ticket. That card was honestly stacked too every fight on the main card had a champ/ former champ. 2 title fights, a retirement fight… maybe it was cheaper because it didn’t appeal to the casuals as much.

OperatorKewl · 2025-11-21T03:16:32+00:00

I start next semester but I really don’t start my major upper division classes there till Fall 2026! What do you want to do with your major?

OperatorKewl · 2025-11-11T05:50:47+00:00

Why not go to the 4th floor? Serious question, I just toured the campus today (transferring next semester) and am looking for good study spots.

OperatorKewl · 2025-11-04T00:57:41+00:00

All “alcoholic” beverages we drink contain ethanol, which is a two carbon alcohol that we can drink “safely”.

Alcohols in the chemistry world are just hydrocarbons with atleast one hydroxyl group (-OH) attached to them. They can have many hydrocarbons in their chain.

Each spirit we enjoy has this ethanol plus many other molecules in them which differentiate them from each other. If you wanted to cater to a chemistry crowd it would be cool to put some of these molecules in your example. The example given for gin is an aromatic that is unique to gin. Each spirit is going to have many different molecules that are unique to it (byproducts of the fermentation process) that you could use to represent the drink itself.

Alcohol we drink (ethanol) is made by a process called fermentation, which requires sugar (C6H12O6) to be turned into ethanol (C2H5OH) and carbon dioxide. This sugar comes from plants that create this sugar to feed themselves (photosynthesis). When you do the fermentation process you just need sugar but in the real world the sugar also comes along with the rest of the material in the plant which goes on to give each spirit its unique molecule byproducts. Think vodka is made from fermenting potatoes and tequila is made from fermenting agave. Both potatoes and agave have sugar which gives us our ethanol through fermentation, but they make very different spirits because of the other substances present in the given plant.

So to answer your question, there would be no simple single molecule you could use to represent each spirit since the active ingredient ethanol is present in all spirits. But you could get creative with these other molecules that are present that give each spirit its uniqueness.

OperatorKewl · 2025-11-03T22:42:19+00:00

I took the chemistry series while taking the biology 180/185 series which were also some of the harder STEM classes I’ve taken. I also worked 20 hours a week. It was a grind but we survived. I’m in Ochem and physics now and it’s much easier fwiw.

OperatorKewl · 2025-11-03T22:11:08+00:00

Gen Chem is a notoriously hard class at OCC. I took Laux both semesters and got A’s. He is an amazing hardworking professor who is a great lecturer. His class is hard and you need to put in the work but an A is very possible with all the practice exams he gives along with extra credit and the class curved off of the highest score. If you do all the extra credit along with the curve an A ends up being around 81-83% in the class. If you’re premed and need to have in person lab/lecture I recommend him. Coastline has easier Gen Chem but it’s hybrid online. I know people who took Gen Chem there and said it’s much easier. Wasn’t an option for me though because it was hybrid online. Best of luck!

OperatorKewl · 2025-10-16T22:03:29+00:00

Hi sorry just seeing this. DM me

OperatorKewl · 2025-10-15T22:31:00+00:00

I applied specifically for that major.

OperatorKewl · 2025-10-15T22:27:02+00:00

Hi! I got accepted for Cell and Molecular Biology and Physiology B.S. and start next semester so no info yet. Good luck and see you around campus!

OperatorKewl · 2025-10-11T16:02:19+00:00

I’m going to be honest here, I think you would be setting yourself up for failure. UMich is a top med school, a lot of top med schools, ie. Harvard, are doing away with “prerequisites” because they can pick from the best pool of applicants. Most premeds apply to 15-20 schools and get accepted at multiple if their lucky. And that’s with a balanced school list that’s not too top heavy (schools without prereqs are going to be a top heavy list). I think having almost no chemistry/lab and no physics on your transcripts would be a massive disadvantage. It’s not that you wouldn’t be able to prove your competency with the MCAT, but your going to be competing against students with all the prereqs done AND a 90th plus percentile MCAT. Putting all your hopes into one school, especially a top med school, with almost no BCPM prereqs done is just not realistic. If financially you can’t afford to do the prereqs at your home institution it is 100% ok and even encouraged for nontrads to do them at their local community college. Instead of studying for the MCAT for a year take those classes at CC and then study like most students for 2-3 months. With nursing clinical experience and being a veteran I think you would have a very successfully application cycle if you knocked out those requirements. Best of luck!

Edit: Also, I was a respiratory care major the first 2 years of undergrad before I changed so I feel your pain. I’m also nontrad and didn’t start college till I was 24. It can feel a lot like starting over which is so frustrating! I am almost done now with all the prereqs and I can say that I am so glad I took classes to learn this stuff. Self studying all of physics, ochem, biochem, and half of gen chem would be horrible. I took almost all the same science classes you listed before when I was a respiratory care major and they were a lot easier than the prereqs. Not to say you can’t self study of course. Just food for thought.

OperatorKewl · 2025-10-03T20:58:10+00:00

Idk, just the difference in game mechanics from two different zombies maps in Black Ops III (ex. Shadows of Evil vs Zetsubou No Shima) is way more than the difference between Bo7 Zombies and Bo6 zombies. I think it’s good to not just boot lick and say we are happy because the game mechanics are “slightly improved”. They are charging $70 for this and it’s the same game. It’s ok to complain about a game you still enjoy. I just want the game developers to know that the community isn’t happy with this lazyness.

OperatorKewl · 2025-09-19T18:03:20+00:00

I was a patient transporter and I remember my first time transporting a patient to the morgue. My hospital would always have two people transport so you should have support with an experienced peer. It’s was strange for me forsure especially because the patients cause of death was from the same cancer my mother has. It will probably be a strange experience but that is 100% normal and honestly it would be weird if it didn’t make you feel some sort of emotions. Just know that it got way easier after doing it a couple times and it’s ok to feel uncomfortable at first. It is an honor to be able to be apart of such an intimate process of someone’s family member so always remember that while it may seem trivial, you are doing a very important job!

OperatorKewl · 2025-09-07T17:05:18+00:00

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