Excelsium MCAT Prep Course Review
Taking the MCAT exam is an important step in the process to become a doctor. Although not as difficult as med school, it’s still an extremely difficult process that doesn’t guarantee matriculation. According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, only 22,666 MCAT takers were admitted into medical schools during the 2021-2022 academic year— out of over a million applicants. That’s roughly 2% of all MCAT takers that actually got accepted to medical school.
Sounds hopeless? Well, there are ways to improve your chances; one of the easiest and most effective being to enroll in a MCAT prep course online. Aspiring pre-meds like you have experienced success with Excelsium, who offer a 10-week online course that covers the highest yield topics. Through a gimmick-free and highly personalized approach, this is a great way to quickly get up to speed and stay focused during your MCAT exam preparation. Keep reading to learn more about this MCAT prep course and how it can help you crush your exam!
About Excelsium MCAT Prep Courses
Before enrolling in this course, it’s important to understand what it’s intended to accomplish. This 10-week prep course is designed as a study guide that should be supplemented with extra materials; the instructors actually recommend that you also acquire a MCAT review workbook from 2015 or later.
What you can expect from Excelsium is guided instruction over live streamed video with a 95th percentile medical student instructor and up to 9 other students. Small classes allow these instructors to work closely with you and your fellow students, which is a huge benefit to this course. Each session is about 2 hours, resulting in roughly 20 hours of live instruction. The course also includes 9 hours of live homework review for the questions and concepts that remained unclear even after the UWorld explanations.
This isn’t the only way they help you study— you can expect the work to continue after each online class.
Outside of each lesson, you’ll have access to a companion course with over 2,000 practice questions and 10 practice exams. These practice questions, which are assigned as homework, are provided through a partnership with the popular online learning platform UWorld, who are known for providing a wide range of online courses with glowing endorsements from thousands of satisfied students.
Excelsium includes these features with their MCAT course:
- 2,000 practice questions
- 10 full length practice exams
- 20 hours of live instruction + 10 hours of live homework review
- 95th percentile medical student instructors
- Small classes of up to 10 students
Let’s look at two of these features in greater detail:
Practice Questions on UWorld
Thanks to their partnership with UWorld, Excelsium provides MCAT students with a large volume of online accessible practice questions and exams. The majority of these are multiple choice, with detailed answer explanations that provide further context behind the reasoning of each correct answer. This way, you can learn something important about medical topics whether you answer correctly or incorrectly— with the end goal of helping you answer as many questions correctly as possible! Furthermore, when these explanations are unclear, Excelsium students have up to 10 hours of homework review available to use for further clarification.
Live Instruction
Excelsium not only emphasizes the importance of live learning over recorded models but also offers it at a very competitive price. These live lectures are done over Zoom, where an instructor will guide students through content outlines, reading passages, and slideshow presentations that go over MCAT subject matter in great detail. These sessions are structured like a traditional classroom experience— feel free to raise your hand or interject if you have any questions, and your instructors will happily provide further context to satisfy your curiosity about each lesson. And with the breathing room afforded by small study groups, your 95th percentile scoring medical student instructor can provide insight into whatever aspect of the MCAT exam experience or test curriculum you require.
Ideal Student
Still not sure if this is the right MCAT prep course for your study needs? Consider if any of these statements apply to you:
- If you like learning in a collaborative environment with a few other students, this is the course for you.
- If you want an all-in-one package with textbooks, flashcards, and other supplemental study aids this is not the course for you.
- If you desire accountability and some added structure to your MCAT studying via live online lectures and integrated practice questions for homework, this is the course for you.
Final Recommendation
If you already have MCAT review books and find yourself stuck somewhere between inefficient self-studying and unease about spending big money on exorbitantly expansive prep courses, Excelsium is the sure way to effectively kickstart your MCAT studying! They’re the perfect balance between a comprehensive university course and an online cram course, with an ideal learning environment best suited for modern students.