Ace the ACEM is the coached course most Australian and New Zealand candidates hear about first, and for good reason. It is the most complete written-exam preparation available and the one we would choose ourselves if cost were no object. It is also built around a specific idea of how to prepare, and that idea leaves one layer to the candidate. This page sets out what the course includes according to its own materials, what it does not publish, and how a self-paced question bank fits around it.
What Ace the ACEM is
"Ace the ACEM" is the branding used by the Advanced Centre for Emergency Education, an independent provider (not connected to ACEM) that runs two courses: a Written Fellowship Exam Course and an OSCE Fellowship Exam Course. The written course, according to its public pages, consists of:
- a six-month teaching cycle timed to each written sitting;
- more than 500 hours of structured education through live and recorded webinars, covering 800+ core ACEM topics;
- 800+ syllabus-aligned SAQs worked through in teaching sessions;
- 14 online trial examinations sat under exam conditions and marked by FACEM and PEM FACEM examiners, with feedback on technique and weak areas;
- a three-day course about a month before the exam, currently described as live and virtual (earlier cycles ran in person in Brisbane);
- teaching by practising FACEM and PEM FACEM educators across adult and paediatric emergency medicine.
Two things are not on the public pages: the price, which is by enquiry, and any MCQ question bank or MCQ count. The course materials state that the program covers both the SAQ and MCQ components of the written exam, but the published content is SAQ-led.
Why it is worth the money if you can pay it
The examination reports explain what the course is buying you. Across eleven sittings from 2021 to 2026, the average candidate finished the SAQ paper within a few marks of the pass line, and examiners recorded the same six reasons for lost marks every time: blanks, irrelevant answers, vague terminology, missing mandatory items, hedged lines, and dangerous omissions. Those are technique faults, and technique is learned by having an examiner mark your paper and tell you what they could not give marks for. Fourteen examiner-marked trial papers over six months is exactly that, and no bank, ours included, replaces it.
The teaching matters too. The SAQ topic analysis shows that the hardest questions in recent papers were second-order topics, interpretation questions and non-clinical frameworks: the material a structured syllabus walk-through covers and self-directed study skips. Our honest view is that Ace the ACEM is the best-in-class course for this exam.
What it leaves to you
A course is a timetable. Between webinars and trial papers there are days, and what fills them decides how much of the teaching sticks. Three gaps in particular:
- MCQ volume. The SCQ paper is 120 questions in three hours. It is passed by 83% to 90% of candidates in most recent sittings, which tempts people to treat it as the easy paper, but since the borderline review was revised in 2024 a strong SCQ score is the thing that rescues a narrow SAQ miss: at least 12% of the 2026.1 cohort passed the exam that way. The course does not publish an MCQ bank. You need one, and you need to be using it daily, not in the last month.
- Marked SAQs between trial papers. Fourteen papers over six months is one every fortnight. The technique faults the examiners list are habits, and habits change with daily repetition and immediate feedback. An AI marker that scores your answer against mandatory items in seconds is not a FACEM, but it is available at 11 pm after a shift, and it lets you practise the fix between one marked paper and the next.
- Knowing what to bring to the next session. A bank that tracks your score by curriculum domain, and shows you where you sit against other candidates, turns "I feel weak on tox" into "I am at 54% on toxicology against a cohort at 68%". That is a better question to take into a webinar.
Using ACEMCQ alongside the course
ACEMCQ is a self-paced bank: 2,000+ fellowship MCQs and 700+ SAQs with AI marking against a model answer, timed mock exams, and topic-level performance tracking. It has no timetable, so it fits around a course rather than competing with it. A week that uses both might look like this:
Monday to Friday. 30 to 40 MCQs a day on the topics the course covered that week, then two or three marked SAQs on the same topics, reading the mark-by-mark feedback for the mandatory items you missed.
Trial paper weeks. Sit the course paper. When the examiner feedback comes back, code each lost mark to one of the six examiner factors, then spend the next fortnight’s bank SAQs deliberately fixing the factor that cost you most.
Monthly. One timed 120-MCQ mock in the bank, then look at the domain breakdown and cohort comparison. Any domain more than ten points below the rest goes on the list for the next course session.
Final month. Attend the three-day course. Use the bank for high-yield MCQ volume and to keep the SAQ technique warm; stop learning new material.
The Basic plan (A$29 a month or A$249 a year) gives the full MCQ bank, the 20-week course and up to three marked SAQs a day, which is enough alongside a coached program. Premium (A$49 a month or A$499 a year) removes the SAQ cap. The trial is free and needs no card.
If you cannot afford the course
Then the sequence is different, not worse in kind. ED MCQ’s free SAQ study notes and the FOAMed resources listed in our resources guide cover the teaching layer; a bank covers volume and feedback; a study group covers the "someone reads my paper" layer that a course provides. Our comparison of the four main resources sets out the combinations by budget.
Sources
Course details from emexam.org and acetheacem.thinkific.com on 10 September 2026; the thinkific site sits behind a bot-protection page, so the published course description was read from the Centre’s main site and search listings. Exam statistics from the ACEM Fellowship Written Examination Reports 2021.1 to 2026.1; see the pass-rate analysis. If you represent the Centre and any detail here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Frequently asked questions
What is Ace the ACEM?
Ace the ACEM is the branding used by the Advanced Centre for Emergency Education, an independent provider of coached courses for the ACEM Fellowship written and OSCE exams. Its written course runs over a six-month cycle with live and recorded webinars, 14 trial exams marked by FACEM and PEM FACEM examiners, and a three-day course about a month before the exam.
How much does Ace the ACEM cost?
The price is not published on the public course pages; candidates enrol by enquiry. It is a coached program with examiner marking, so expect course-level rather than subscription-level pricing.
Do I still need a question bank if I do Ace the ACEM?
The course publishes 800+ SAQs and 14 trial papers but no MCQ bank. The MCQ paper is 120 questions, and the examination reports show it is passed by 83% to 90% of candidates in most recent sittings, but it still has to be passed, and a strong SCQ score is what the borderline review uses to rescue a narrow SAQ miss. Daily MCQ volume is the gap a bank fills.
Is ACEMCQ affiliated with Ace the ACEM?
No. ACEMCQ is independent of the Advanced Centre for Emergency Education and of ACEM. This page describes the course from its own public materials, checked on 10 September 2026, and is not a paid or endorsed listing.