Frequently asked questions
What students, parents, and schools ask most, answered plainly.
The basics: what this is, who it's for, and how to begin.
My Chem Mentor is one-on-one chemistry tutoring and pre-professional coaching led by Dr. Eric Wolfson, a PhD organic chemist. Sessions are virtual, and the work ranges from rescuing a single course to guiding a multi-year path toward professional school.
Mostly university STEM and pre-health students on pre-med, pre-vet, pre-pharmacy, pre-dental, and pre-optometry tracks, plus high school students in standard, honors, AP, and IB chemistry.
Book a free 30-minute consultation. There's no commitment; it's a conversation about where you are and whether My Chem Mentor is the right fit.
AI is genuinely useful for chemistry practice: it's good at explaining mechanisms and walking through problems. What it can't do is watch how you think, notice the specific gap that keeps tripping you up, and adjust in real time. A PhD who has taught thousands of hours of organic chemistry has seen your exact mistake before, and knows the fastest way through it.
A tutor helps you pass the next exam. My Chem Mentor works over years, not sessions, building the understanding that carries you through orgo, test prep, and into professional school, while developing the professional identity and network that turn a pre-professional student into a compelling applicant. The scope is different, the relationship is different, and the credentials behind it (PhD, industry research, Johns Hopkins affiliate) are different from what a tutoring marketplace provides.
How the work actually runs, session to session and term to term.
Each session is 60 minutes on a shared virtual whiteboard with live audio and video, focused on the material in front of you. You bring the exam, mechanism, or topic; you work through it live with me, and you get a written recap afterward so the work carries over to your next study block.
The early work is about mastering the material: closing the specific gaps that keep tripping you up and building the organization and planning habits that make the rest of the semester manageable.
Tutoring is focused chemistry help on active coursework. The Coaching Program adds career and identity development plus research and application support, with one person who knows your whole story rather than a new tutor each term.
It ranges widely, from a single exam push to multi-year engagements that run from prerequisites through professional-school applications.
General chemistry is math-heavy, and organic chemistry is built on unfamiliar notation, mechanism logic, and pattern recognition that almost nothing in a student's prior coursework prepares them for. A prep course front-loads that exposure in a low-pressure setting where it's fine to be confused, slow, or asking questions that would feel embarrassing once the class is graded. It's also where students build the study habits that actually work for organic chemistry, since most of the ones that carried them earlier won't.
It depends on where you're headed. If you're retaking OChem 1, every concept that didn't click the first time will come back to bite you unless something changes in between, and a review course is where that happens. If you're moving on to OChem 2, the OChem 1 foundation is exactly what it expects you to have; going in shaky turns a hard semester into an unmanageable one. A short, focused review makes the next term genuinely more comfortable than the last.
Every rate in plain numbers, plus the package and cancellation rules.
Individual sessions are $120 per hour. Prepaid packages of five or more hours are $100 per hour and can be used for any service within 12 months.
The Pre-Professional Coaching Program is $2,400 per quarter, which covers a weekly session plus access between sessions. Longer engagements run deeper: the Full Journey starts at $16,000 for a 12 to 24 month arc, and VIP is a $25,000 retainer covering unlimited sessions through degree completion.
Yes. Buying five or more hours up front lowers the rate from $120 to $100 per hour, and those hours apply to any service for a full year.
Every prepaid session, single or packaged, is good for 12 months from the day you buy it. After that, unused sessions are forfeited. It's the one hard rule here, stated up front so nothing surprises you at month 13.
Yes. Your first session with My Chem Mentor is covered by a good-fit guarantee: if it's not the right fit, a pay-as-you-go session is refunded and a package refunds in full. It applies once, to that first session.
Most pre-professional students already spend $8,500 to $11,000 a year on fragmented help from separate tutors, test-prep, and consultants. Integrated coaching is similar in total cost with far better continuity, because one person knows your whole story year over year.
The questions parents ask most before the first conversation.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and it depends on whether your student is wrestling with real questions or looking for a shortcut. The students who get the most out of this are willing to engage with the science and the career conversation. If your student is going through pre-health motions because it's expected of them, the work can't fix that by itself, but it can surface the underlying problem clearly enough that you can decide what to do about it.
A tutor helps with the next exam. An admissions consultant helps with the application. Neither one knows your student, or each other. This is one person across the full arc: chemistry, career, and application strategy in a single ongoing conversation.
Yes, if your student wants you involved. I can build in quarterly parent check-ins so you know how things are going. The default is a confidential working relationship between me and your student. Parents who want involvement get it, and parents who prefer to step back get that too.
That's one of the most valuable outcomes the work can produce. A student who stays on a path out of momentum can lose years they can't get back. If your student decides to change direction, that's a success, and the coaching keeps supporting whatever they pivot to.
Chemistry help is $120 an hour, or $100 in a package of five or more. The Coaching Program is $2,400 a quarter, and the Full Journey runs $16,000+ across 12 to 24 months. Done the scattered way, four years of tutoring, exam prep, and admissions help usually totals $13,000 to $32,000.
How schools and universities bring a PhD-led program on-site.
They're exactly who this is for. Those courses prove content mastery. The first year of college tests pace, exam formats, and self-management in a course where nobody takes attendance. The intensive meets strong students where they are and prepares them for that environment.
A week doesn't replace a semester of habits, and I won't claim it does. What a week delivers is specific: students see the hardest early material before it counts, build a study system before they need it, and walk into the first lecture already moving. The readiness tier and cohort coaching exist because the durable gains come from what students keep doing afterward.
Yes. Schools use the intensive to prepare college-bound students; universities use it as a pre-term bootcamp for incoming students, and use cohort coaching and workshops to support students through gateway courses and to give faculty and staff practical training. Larger cohorts and embedded partnerships scope to your program on a call.
Schools and universities book these as fixed-price contracts. The five-day Gen Chem intensive runs $13,000 to $18,000 for 20 or 30 on-site contact hours, semester cohort coaching is $6,000 for 12 live-virtual sessions, and school workshops are $800 to $1,200 depending on virtual or in-person. Travel is itemized at cost.
I am, for every session of every program. Nothing here is delivered by anyone else.
Twenty to thirty minutes: your calendar, which program fits first, and how it maps to your students. You leave with a written scope your office can take straight to budget.
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