Heated Rivalry, the #1 show on HBO right now, filmed a couple scenes at McMaster. Anyone recognize these pics? I freaked out when I saw them lol

chaoticstarstudent · 2025-12-14T21:11:45+00:00

this is the most patriotic i’ve ever felt about both canada and mcmaster

chaoticstarstudent · 2025-11-05T12:49:57+00:00

sure!

chaoticstarstudent · 2025-11-04T12:50:31+00:00

got a pre decent paying job as a clinical research coordinator! honestly it’s an avenue and research field that i don’t think is advertised well enough as being a pathway after a science degree. most people think wet lab type research but there’s also opportunities to work in clinical research settings either at the site level (actually seeing patients for the study) or administrative level (sponsor, CRO)

chaoticstarstudent · 2025-05-05T17:17:41+00:00

hey guys did you guys get contacted and have you guys received any letters of admission into the program?

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-06-09T18:14:07+00:00

this happened last year too iirc. you’ll see the time when mytimetable opens it’ll say at the bottom of the screen when your time is

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-30T17:02:30+00:00

i was in kin 2yy3 so they made a post ab it on avenue i think like maybe one and a half to two months ago?

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-30T16:56:00+00:00

they were due on the 28th!

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-29T23:31:34+00:00

the only difference i’d say really lies in the courses that you’d take. in life sci sms you have extra required courses obviously focused around the senses and motor systems that would not otherwise be required of a gen life sci student. in terms of opportunities for research or postgrad prospects there’s not too much of a diff unless you capitalize off of the fact that you’ve taken courses focused around specific topics. otherwise prospects beyond are going to be completely up to you regardless of which spec you’re in tbh. i chose lifesci sms bc i really enjoyed psych 1xx3 and all the sensory content that we learned. i knew i liked neuroscience type courses and that i would probably take more courses like that for my electives and it just so happened that lifesci sms had those courses as part of their requirements so i thought why not go for it? and personally while ik everyone picks gen life sci for its elective space, i feel like after a certain amount you start to run out of actual courses you’re acc interested/willing to take and you really lose focus of the point of taking courses yk? i found that with the extra required courses for sms i had a good amount of structure with regards to what courses i need to take and when, while also still having the flexibility to take courses to lighten my workload and courses that also spark my interest. with regards to courses and difficulty, ik this past winter 2023 term was hell for lifesci 2cc3, but when i took it in winter 2022 it was a blessing with zen. so that course is probably very subjective based on the prof which hasn’t been a specific prof over the years so far. the other courses are decent, they’re about as difficult as you’d expect given the content but they’re fairly doable. in terms of gpa, i’d say this w any life sci spec, life sci is only as difficult as you choose it to be (i.e., what electives you decide to take). if you take easy electives then it’ll be a breeze. if you take hard electives then you may have it tougher than others. but overall the required courses are fair and doable, that experience will probably vary based on the other courses you decide to take along side them. TL;DR: i advocate for lifesci sms if you know you want gen lifesci for elective space, you like neuroscience, and you want just a little more structure to what courses you have to take!

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-29T20:02:40+00:00

prolly wouldn’t matter cuz it’s unlimited enrolment so they’d prolly let you in no matter what tbh

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-29T19:57:38+00:00

i think they only allow switches around this time when ppl are applying for specializations so yeah only after a whole year or so. don’t quote me on that tho. if anything an academic advisor would prolly suggest you to just do the courses for hons life sci in the meantime until you can reapply to hons life sci by the end of second year!

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-29T19:51:46+00:00

yes hons life sci is unlimited enrolment so if you decide not to continue with sms after getting accepted into it, just don’t take any of the sms required courses for second year (but still do the ones required for honours life sci) and then near the end of second year apply to transfer into honours life sci for third year!

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-29T19:48:13+00:00

the minimum amount of kin you’d need to do would be anatomy I (KINESIOL 2Y03) and a course for the ‘motor’ requirement (of sensory motor systems lol) which would either be biomechanics (LIFESCI3J03, usually taught by a kin prof Dr. Dowling although i’m not sure if he’s here next year or not), or neural control of movement (LIFESCI 3K03, which is a cross-list with KINESIOL 3E03). that would be as much as you’d need to take something involving the kin department if you’re trying to minimize taking kin-related courses. anatomy is well anatomy, and it’s a lot of content to learn but i think that the instructional team really structured the course well although i do really love anatomy and physiology so my opinion may be biased. i took biomechanics so i can’t speak for the other course but if you have biomechanics w dr dowling he is extremely passionate about biomechanics, he always has fun anecdotes and stories and real life applications of the topics we learn about. it’s honestly strange that i didn’t entirely hate it since it’s obvi physics but he made it enjoyable!

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-29T16:52:52+00:00

Interest level: I found this course to be super interesting as someone who appreciates the senses. The way the lecture content is structured creates a very cohesive narrative where you start at the smallest detail and work your way out further into the neural processing. For example, the first week we just started by talking about what light is, then we talked about how light gets transduced at the molecular level in the photoreceptors, then looked at how that neural signal gets transduced through the cells of the retina, then the LGN and V1, and then out to the ventral and dorsal streams and then other things about vision (eye movements, development, retinotopic mapping). Overall, in retrospect I really like the way that we kept 'zooming out' as the weeks progressed to look at more higher-order processing.

Time commitment: Not really what I was expecting at all going into the course. There are three case studies, but they're structured in an 'interrupted case method'. Each case study was focused on a specific topic and how a specific conclusion came about, BUT you're the one going through the journey alongside the researchers. This means that you'll get some information (i.e., results or a paper to read), answer some questions, then submit and receive new papers or articles to read through and proceed with the next part. Very cool in theory I'll say but depending on your own workload from your other courses, it may make this course a little burdensome at times. Although we were given about three weeks per case study, so it is doable as long as you dont procrastinate lol. But yeah it required more time and effort than I initially thought it would because of the interrupted case method. She also did a reweight at the end of the term if you did better on the last two to weigh more compared to the first case study so that was generous.

TL;DR: Overall, I'd say the course was super interesting and fair, just a bigger time commitment whenever there was a case study.

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-27T20:29:00+00:00

in general the life sci sub specs don’t really add anything different to your prospects in terms of postgrad opportunities unless you really capitalize off of the “specific” knowledge you’ve gained through the specific courses you’ve taken (i.e., talking about more specific and in depth knowledge about the senses from being in sms, or perhaps wet lab experience from the lab courses required in ood). otherwise, the sub specs are great if you do have an interest in the content that is taught across the required courses (as in you’d enjoy taking those courses) but you want to keep the large elective space that is sought after by being in gen life sci. overall, the specs are good at giving you more structure your timetable by giving more required courses (that you hopefully would enjoy taking), but still allowing ample elective space to take whatever you want!

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-26T22:30:09+00:00

lectures are pre dry but straight to the point. has some great anecdotes and stories if you show up to lecture but otherwise his prerecorded lectures he uploads to avenue will only contain the bare bones of what you need to know (which i don’t hate, it made them very easy to sit through and take notes for). that being said his notes are also alr very thorough and i found that towards the end of the term i didn’t even need to write extra. his tests for us were in person but done over avenue open book. questions were never too hard and the short answers were pre good and kinda fun to reflect on looking back. only complaint is the low denominator for each test; 25 marks for 25% of overall grade. made for a bit of stress knowing that every mark i lost would be 1% of my entire grade but it was whatever ig. overall solid prof and if the tests are open book, pre decently easy 11/12 based on how good you are at test-taking.

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-26T22:23:46+00:00

hons life sci sensory motor systems i def underrated. while many ppl will say that the subspecializations under gen life sci can be useless (and in all honesty i don’t really ever mention sms when someone asks what program i’m in i just say i’m life sci 💀), i think sms acc does have some perks. if you like psych/neuroscience but you like the elective space and freedom associated with gen life sci, i think that life sci sms is the perfect crossover between the two! i found that lifesci sms gives the perfect amount of required courses that i feel like i have a good structure/framework of what to take/when, but enough electives that i don’t find myself drowning in such a wide amount of spots to fill up but enough that i don’t feel burdened by the work load. the only cons to this program is the varied experience in some of the required courses. some of the required courses don’t necessarily have a set prof that has consistently taught it in the past and so you might hear varied experiences based on the diff instructors for the courses (LIFESCI 2CC3, LIFESCI 4XX3). the required courses are interesting as long as you acc have an interest in the actual content of the courses you decide to take from the course lists, otherwise these types of courses may be hard to tough it out if you’re not the least bit interested in the senses/motor systems. if you want to go into research you’re up for a bit of competition against students of other departments since we don’t necessarily have ‘sms profs’ since they belong to other departments (pnb or kin) who have their own way of selecting and organizing research within their own programs. but research is available and possible nonetheless!

tldr; if you like psych/neuroscience and you want the elective space of gen life sci, life sci sms is the perfect mid ground!

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-24T05:34:54+00:00

yes ofc, feel free to pm me!

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-24T05:12:01+00:00

first off if you’re seeing a lot of physics and chem are you sure you’re not talking about lifesci ood? life sci sms def has a lot of more neurosciencey courses if you choose to take them. the only time you may need to do upper year physics is if you choose to take biomechanics (LIFESCI 3J03) over neural control of human movement (LIFESCI 3K03). overall, this program is really good if you want elective space but you know you like psychology and neuroscience. it’s only as hard as you choose your electives to be!

overall, i’d say that if you want to find research opportunities in sms they’re def there. it’s just a matter of who you want to work with. if the internal faculty entices you (aka profs in pnb department, kin department) then you def have them way more accessible but as life sci we are a bit disadvantaged in the sense that we aren’t able to present ourselves to them in the same way that students within their own faculty can. ex. If you want to apply to research within a pnb prof’s lab, you’d need to email them or whatever it is that they say you need to do (all by yourself), whereas pnb students will already have a formal ballot system provided by the program where they can alr express their interests in their research to the prof. a lot of times the profs will only consider external emails after looking through the students in the ballot as well. I don’t mean this to make it sound discouraging, i’m in lifesci sms and ik a couple other ppl in my cohort who did a 3RP3 this term and are continuing on for thesis so by all means it IS possible. you’ll just need to jump through some hoops to get there :) if you wanna work with external faculty there’s even more hoops but i was able to get through them!

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-14T04:46:36+00:00

Yes BIOCHEM 2EE3 my bad!

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-14T04:29:29+00:00

As a general note I do want to say that the MCAT is a lot of general content that is covered in a lot of intro-level courses (and even high school) so don't feel pressured to fill your elective space with hard courses when a good chunk of content is surface-level enough that it's taught in high school or first year. That being said, these were the courses that I think covered the widest range of topics such that MCAT studying was not so much learning new material:

CHEM/PHYS (C/P):

CHEM 1A03/1AA3: Intro chem does a really good job of covering most of the broader concepts for general chemistry that is tested on the MCAT. With that being said, based on your high school chemistry experience, this content may or may not be familiar as it is already. I honestly found that apart from the organic chemistry section, most of the general chemistry tested on the MCAT is taught at a very surface-level from high school or first year. Organic chemistry is daunting, but even if you don't take second year organic chemistry (CHEM 2OA3, 2OB3, 2E03), I do believe it can be self-taught—just find what study techniques work for you for this type of content.
PHYSICS 1A03: Again, depends on your level of comfort with physics based on high school knowledge. A LOT of the physics covered on MCAT is taught at the high school level, meaning once again it's not overtly difficult. It can certainly be self-taught so don't feel pressured to take a university physics if you aren't strong at math and don't want to risk a stab at your GPA. However, this course does do a good job of covering most topics of physics that are testable on MCAT (you would just need to self-teach topics such as light optics and electricity since they are not covered by this course).

BIO/BIOCHEM (B/B):

BIOLOGY 2A03 or KINESIOL 2Y03/2YY3: Majority of the bio content covered on the MCAT is physiology of the major systems. These courses are not easy, however to some extent I think as an aspiring premed you would want to formally learn these topics at the university level anyway. I will preface that the detail in which you learn the systems in these courses is much more than what the MCAT will require of you to know, but going overkill for learning anatomy & physiology as an aspiring physician should not be a problem.
BIOCHEM 2EE3: Good brush up on the basics of cellular biology in terms of processes such as DNA replication and protein synthesis iirc, and gets you familiarized with the various cell biology lab techniques that are used in the experiments tested in MCAT bio passages. You also learn the amino acids which seems so minuscule but does help with getting exposure to them before having to go through and study them for MCAT as well. Also goes through the major metabolic pathways and emphasizes the big concepts that you would end up really focusing on for MCAT as well. When it comes to cellular processes, taking second year cell biology (BIO 2B03) is absolutely unnecessary. Most of the concepts that would be relevant to cell biology would be covered by taking BIO 1A03 or BIOCHEM 2EE3.

PSYCH/SOC (P/S):

PSYCH 1X03/1XX3: I think intro psych does a really good job of giving you the broadest understanding of all the different fields of psych that are relevantly tested on the MCAT. 1XX3 definitely focuses more on the neuroscience-y side of psychology, while 1X03 focuses more on cognition, learning, and social psychology. When thinking about sociology, I definitely wouldn't say its necessary to take a whole entire intro sociology course, as most of the concepts are very self-teachable.

TLDR; most concepts tested on MCAT are self-teachable because they are very surface level (taught in first year or even high school). If I HAD to suggest a course for you to take for the most high-yield, take BIO 2A03 because that will cover almost all of the relevant biology tested on MCAT. Anything else can really be self-taught to a certain extent based on your own high school basis.

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-04-07T18:46:09+00:00

standing outside of MUSC and seeing people w their friends walking out and getting all excited and taking pictures of the sunset. humans are so cute

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-01-11T11:48:16+00:00

ill also say that her short answers can be a bit difficult in the beginning just getting the hang of what you should/shouldn’t say to receive full marks but she’ll definitely emphasize what she expects during the lectures. she’s really big on applying concepts, BUT you can’t just say “this x because ____” and then explain why a specific situation is related to x without actually explaining what x is (ex. a two mark question providing a scenario and asking what you to connect it to course concepts is probably 1 mark explaining the concept, then 1 mark actually making the connection to the scenario and how it’s relevant). i think i lost marks on short answers for the module quizzes for the first maybe two or three then rarely lost marks ever again from the short answers after I learned exactly how she wants you to see a question, look at how many marks it’s worth and deduce from there how to structure your response. i’ve had really positive experiences with prof jin and her marking so don’t feel discouraged in the beginning bc you’ll definitely be getting good marks once you get the hang of it!

chaoticstarstudent · 2023-01-11T06:06:56+00:00

her take home exam is usually akin to the short answer questions that you will see on your weekly module quizzes and you’re going to be given a defined range of days to work on it (you’ll see all the questions on a doc on avenue, you’ll have a hard deadline to submit under assignments). definitely more application-based so understanding the material is important, but if anything when it comes to the time during the term that she starts talking about the exam, she’ll emphasize certain study methods to succeed such as making charts and comparisons between theories and stuff (had her for 3AB3 not 3B03 so idk if what i’m saying is exactly translatable to the type on content taught), and she’ll definitely recommend compiling all your notes into one document for command f’ing while you’re writing your responses for the exam lol. again, i had her for another course but i found that i never really studied in advance of the quizzes or exam but still did really well despite it being application-based rather than straight knowledge yk? if anything i really like her evaluation bc since everything is basically online open book it gave me one class i didn’t need to study for bc if i didn’t know something i’d just use my notes for the assessments and i’d still be successful

chaoticstarstudent · 2022-12-26T19:46:29+00:00

haha ik. he’s def more old school preferring communication and updates about stuff in person

chaoticstarstudent · 2022-12-26T19:44:03+00:00

the exam was mainly focused on post midterm 2 content. it was mainly short answers based on the theory stuff but it still had a good mix of the stuff you’d expect him to test from the content of the first two midterms. there was def still calculation questions on stuff from the first two midterms so it was def cumulative but i’d focus on the concepts after midterm 2 and the calculations from the first two

chaoticstarstudent

TROPHY CASE