This course is designed to offer value to students both beginner and more advanced. This may seem a contradiction, but we will be fully honest to say that students without experience may find themselves having to work significantly more time and effort into the course and biology. However, often it is not prior experience but rather how hard a student works (as evidenced by our 3 freshman finalists in 2021).
We think that anyone who has enough dedication/commitment to the course will be able to succeed. Generally it is not the students who have the most experience of the most advanced biology courses that do the best but rather those that put in the most effort and dedicate their time will succeed. That being said, completing at least Honors Biology is recommended.
While live participation is highly participated and beneficial, we totally understand that it can be hard to make it to all the sessions, every single class is recorded and made available within a week to those who miss class. We have also introduced a new flexible, university-style office hours which will be flexible and give students opportunity for live help even if they cannot make sessions normally!
Our helpful staff will email you with further directions, but the next step is to send payment through Zelle. We are a small business and as such our staff will check for new registrants periodically but it may take 24-48 hours. We thank you in advance for your patience!
By Signing up for the course, not only do you get access to our high quality lectures and access to our world-class staff, we also write unit summaries, provide detailed reading lists for both beginner and advanced students, and hold many additional events and activities.
Unfortunately not :(. However students who retake a particular course (i.e. session 1 and session 2) can get a 30% discount for that same course. The course is designed to be taken multiple times because we expect you will learn new things each time and the course has been revamped each time to offer more value and content!
We've been lucky to have finalists every year from our main course participants! Many remain involved with the course and its community. They’re regular presences in class and in our community mentoring other students and answering questions.
Our course provides most of the materials a student may need to succeed in the course with the exception of textbooks. The only text you definitely need is Campbell’s Biology. Any edition 10th or later will suffice. If you need to buy an older edition 9th and 7th are also very good.
For each week we recommend you do the Suggested Readings for that week before the main lecture. More advanced students may want to peruse our additional readings after each weeks lecture and students should read the unit summaries for each week and turn it in so our TAs may grade it.
The booster classes are small, test-prep oriented sessions that focus on review of basic material and old tests. They are offered usually as “intensives” and are some of the more popular course offerings.
We understand that the class may be expensive but it’s because we think it’s really worth it! Our class is actually priced competitively against similar offerings from other sources (who sometimes are only selling recordings!). We also make sure to compensate our talented staff fairly for their time.
If you have other unanswered questions feel free to write to kevinbaobiology@yahoo.com and we will answer you as soon as possible.