MEWC
FMWC
TAC
EEO
introduction:
Some students find Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge through a professor. Others through a friend. Teagan Parkin, a student at the University of Victoria, found it the way most great discoveries happen – an interesting article landed in her inbox, she followed the thread, and somewhere along the way she couldn’t stop.
She had no Excel background to speak of beyond budgeting spreadsheets and a work term. She had never competed in anything like this before. And yet something about the idea of a student Excel Esports competition – free to enter, global in scale, with a finals stage in Las Vegas – was too interesting to ignore.
how it started..
It was an article about one of the championship events that first caught Teagan’s attention. Intrigued, she read it, then went looking for more. When she found the student competition and saw it was free to enter, the decision was simple. “I figured why not sign up, give it a try and see what happened.”
What happened was the beginning of something she didn’t quite expect.
Excel Before MECC
Teagan would describe her pre-MECC Excel experience as “generally average for a student, if slightly nerdier than most.” She had been building spreadsheets to manage her budget since high school, and got more comfortable with Excel during her first work term in undergrad – picking up new functions, learning the basics of data entry and analysis.
She thought she had a solid handle on it. Then she joined the competition. “I realized how much more there was to learn and that I had barely scratched the surface of what Excel could do.”
Learning by Doing - and Losing Track of Time
Teagan’s first competition was the January 2025 Weekend Battle. She had no idea what to expect. She logged in, downloaded the Junior Varsity file, and found herself staring at the Yellow Brick Road ‘We’re not in Kansas anymore’ case with the clock already ticking.
She worked through it question by question, answered most of them in time, and felt encouraged enough to open the Varsity file. The puzzle pulled her in completely. “Unfortunately, I didn’t notice that almost an hour had passed while I was working on it – so I got zero points for being over time.”
But the walkthrough that followed changed everything. She learned to set her own timer before downloading a case. She discovered =XLOOKUP(), which quickly became one of her favourites. And she knew she had to come back next month, and the one after that.
The Day the Results Changed Everything
The highlight so far came after the 2025 Battle for Semi-Finals & Scholarships. Teagan had put in a full year of competition but wasn’t sure where she stood. She was hoping to barely make the top 45 and qualify. She woke up early on the Saturday, played the case, and spent the whole weekend waiting.
When the results email arrived on Monday, she had qualified. But when she checked the scores, the real surprise hit: she had placed 16th out of almost 100 competitors.
“It was amazing to realize that I really had learned a few useful things over the course of the year.”
The Timer, the Puzzle, and What She Took Away
For Teagan, one of the most unexpected things MECC gave her was practice letting go of perfectionism. With 30 minutes on the clock, there is no time to debate every possible approach. “I have to pick one path to the solution and run with it. Maybe it’s not the most elegant or even the fastest, but if I realize that halfway through, there’s rarely time to start over.”
After the competition ends, she goes back and tries the more elegant way – and both approaches end up being worth knowing. It is humbling, she says, but humbling in a motivating way. There is always more to learn, and in MECC, there are always more opportunities to do so.
just sign up
Her advice to anyone hesitant is straightforward. “It’s free, and the stakes can be as low or as high as you want. You might as well just sign up, try a practice case, try a Weekend Battle. No matter how you do, there are so many opportunities to learn.”
Teagan knows better than most that you do not need to feel ready before you start. She signed up out of curiosity, got zero points in her first Varsity attempt, and kept coming back anyway. A year later she was placed 16th in a field of almost 100. Learning happens both inside the competition and before it.
The puzzles are there. The community is there. The walkthroughs are there. Everything you need to improve is already available the moment you sign up – all that is missing is you.
And if you happen to be at UVic – she is already looking for teammates.
Watch the Full Interview
Hear more about Teagan Parkin’s story and the full journey from a late article in her inbox to placing 16th out of almost 100 competitors. Watch the full interview with Teagan here: