<p>Here is my current situation. I am in my first semester of my 4th year in Community College. I am computer science major and have completed a majority of my courses and am past 63.5 transferable units. I had originally planned on finishing the rest of my courses from assist.org and a couple of general ed courses by next semester. I need this to all be done because I am currently in the process of sending in applications to UCs and have just tagged with UCI.. To explain why it has taken this long was because my first year and a half consisted of taking useless courses because I was taking the cal state route .. so I have some courses on my transcript that do not count towards my major such as nutrition, speech etc.. At this point I knew I wanted to do computer science but did not know much about the courses I needed to take and did not know much of what was involved. So I didn't have a direct and confident path on what I wanted to do... Now, 3 years later after having taken some programming classes after no programming experience or background whatsoever I know now exactly what it takes and what I need to do because I am a little bit more mature and educated on the field of computer science. I still feel the programming classes i took did not get me ready enough to say confidently that I am ready for upper division classes at a UC. It took a year and a half or so to finally put together why computer discrete math and programming were related. But I still feel I am not where I need to be with programming because I did not understand it while I was taking the courses, although I do understand now but its just gotta put in more practice. And I am committed and excited to put in my own time to do so now to learn because now I am much more confident of my path. So my question is can I take a possible gap 5th year to put this time in to learn my programming and possibly look for an internship for my field and then apply next year? Or will it look bad that I have taken this long to get myself ready for upper division uc classes...Sometimes I look back and wished I learned programming at age 17 like other students but here I am at 21 knowing exactly what it takes.. its just the matter of putting in your own extra time to study and practice more to make sure your better ready for your higher classes.. not only that but it gives me a chance to mature in my field a little more.</p>
<p><strong><em>bump</em></strong></p>
<p>I don’t know anything about the UC system, so can’t tell you whether they’d hold a year off against you, although it seems unlikely to me that they would.</p>
<p>From a “once you’re out of school” situation, no one is going to care at all.</p>