0-3: Words of Encouragement / Study Advice

This forum got me through too.

Thanks for sharing.

That's so awesome the Director of Finance offers that level of guidance and support. Really says a lot about the people and business at where your at. I think he/she says it best.

Do exactly what Tux mentioned as far as I suggest – don't jump around to different test sections.

FAR and Audit has the lowest passing rates. Take FAR (more chapters), and do not stop until you get a 75. If you would have devoted all this energy to FAR only, you would have passed it by now.

I'm 0-3 also. I'm starting to like the feeling of getting kicked in the mouth by these tests. It just fuels the rage inside of me and my desire to obliterate them next time around.

Give these tests credit, but not too much credit. They ARE beatable. Put the time in and focus.

Let me tell you that I was 0-6 since 2008 until my first and second pass until the last quarter of 2014.

As mentioned above, focus on FAR first and plan to pass it before your next section. Plan on spending at least 150 to 200 hours studying. Take practice tests once a week to gage your progress. Sit for FAR once your scoring in the 75-80 range on the practice tests. Repeat for AUD, REG, BEC.

This stuff doesn't come easy for a lot of us so putting in the time is the only way. You'll have to sacrifice your social life and maybe your first born as well, but it will be worth it.

@THendry I agree with others that you should go back to FAR and try to pass that one first since it's the hardest and longest. I agree with Kimboroni that you’ll need about 6-8 weeks. If I were you I would treat this like your first test. I’m also studying with Roger and he’s great for people who need more of a teaching course. I suggest only taking notes from what he’s writing on the white board. As you go through the material really take the time to understand the concepts. In some cases it would take me more than an hour just to nail down one concept like bond amortization or non-monetary exchanges before I can even start with the MCQs. When I started the MCQs then I would try to find patterns to how the questions were being asked. I also did J/Es with most of the questions or t-accounts to know how things were being accounted for. This will help with SIMS. I didn't practice SIMS but I wished I had so I do advise some practice with SIMS to also help with understanding the concepts from another angle. Also, don’t forget IFRS and government and NFP. I’m so glad I dedicated study time to these because I felt a lot more confident going into my re-take knowing I had made time for these chapters.

So advice: watch videos again, take notes on video lectures, work MCQs in Roger’s test bank and then two weeks before consider buying NINJA MCQs because they are a lot harder than Roger’s and more comprehensive. Review your notes or flash cards every night. Also, the trick to not forgetting stuff is to do 30 cumulative MCQs every day or every other day of sections already covered. As you get closer do 60 if you can. I personally studied every day about 3 hours and 10 hours on weekends in an 8 week period. I’m a slow learner and I needed as much time as possible, especially that I didn’t want to fail again. Hope this helps. Good luck!

I took the exam a dozen times. So I guess my first piece of advice would be stick with it you can do it no matter how many you fail.

I only used NINJA products on my last exam and I had a 15 point jump from my previous score. So that being said my second piece of advice. NINJA MCQ really does work. The audio on car rides helped so much. I felt like I got an extra hour of studying in every single day.