[Anonymous]

I’m currently studying for BEC but I have realized that it has been the toughest part of all. Does anybody feel the same way?

[Zuly]

For me FAR was harder just because of the sheer volume of information. However, BEC isn't easy as I thought it would be. Way too many formulas. I had my exam set for 5/31 but ended up moving it to 7/6 because there was no way I would be able to memorize and know how to apply all these formulas. Also, I'm not even in the “toughest” part of BEC yet…from what I hear the whole cost accounting and variances is a killer…not looking forward to that part. So far I've covered Economics, COSO and financial management. How about you? When is your exam set for?

FAR - (11/01/14) 71 (02/07/15) 79
AUD - (04/30/15) 86
BEC - (07/21/15) 73 (10/01/15) 75
REG - (11/30/15) 55 (05/19/16) 74

[Martin]

BEC has the highest passing rate for a good reason. If BEC were 40% Simulations, it might be the hardest part of the 4 because it will require more in depth knowledge. Since 85% of the exam is MC based, you just need to recognize the information, you dont need to recall it since there are no simulations. I think FAR was the hardest part because of the amount of info you need to recall to be ready to answer simulations from 9 extremely different chapters. This is the reason why the % of people passing the CPA exam before 2011 was higher. Before 2011 the exam was 70% MC,20% simulations and 10% for a stupid memo. You could recognize the info and get close to 70% of the grade, the memo was very easy to do as well, so the passing rate was more than it is now.

Recognition vs. Recall

The big difference between recognition and recall is the amount of cues that can help the memory retrieval; recall involves fewer cues than recognition.

Answering a question such as Did Herman Melville write Moby Dick? involves recognition: you simply have to recognize whether the information provided is correct. If instead I asked you Who wrote Moby Dick? you would use a process of recall to retrieve the right answer from your memory.

Recognition is easier than recall because it involves more cues: all those cues spread activation to related information in memory, raise the answer’s activation, and make you more likely to pick it. It’s the reason for which multiple-choice questions are easier than open questions, where the respondent has to come up with an answer.

In our everyday life, we often use a combination of recognition and recall to help us retrieve information from memory. Often we start with a piece of information that is easier to recall to narrow down our choices, then we go through the resulting choices one by one and recognize the relevant one. An example is going to a website by remembering its name and typing it into the browser’s address bar. Say you want to go to our site: if you’ve been here a lot, you might recall that it’s called nngroup.com and get here quickly and easily. But many people would only be able to recall some terms they associate with the site, such as maybe “usability,” “user experience,” or “Jakob Nielsen.” Luckily, for most such terms, entering them into a major search engine will bring up this website as one of the entries on the first page. This transforms your task into one of scanning the SERP (search engine results page) and relying on recognition to pick out the desired website from among the other options listed. (In fact, a paper by Eytan Adar, Jaime Teevan, and Susan Dumais showed that this method of retracing the path to a previous page is the preferred method for revisiting content on the web.)

Search does require users to generate query terms from scratch—which most people are bad at —but from then on users are able to rely on recognition while using the search results. This is one of the reasons search engines have become such an essential tool for using the web. Search suggestions are a major advance in search usability because they partly transform the query generation task from one of recall to one of recognition.

Through God all things can happen!

“You never fail until you stop trying.”
― Albert Einstein
When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people;as I grow older, I admire kind people.
“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

FAR= 72-84
Audit= 73-82
BEC= 74-75
Reg=77

[Anonymous]

BEC has a ton of calculations though. So your not really recalling everything because you have to come up with an answer based off the information given. And you can't just eliminate answers since they give you answers that can be calculated including or excluding given information. I also got a few pretty wicked NPV calculations that just took straight up time

Of course for the IT and corp governance questions I agree, there is a lot of recall going on there

I actually find MCQS harder than SIMS. On my AUD fail I was stronger on SIMS and weaker on MCQ. We all have different strengths and weaknesses.

[Anonymous]

Hey Zumo! Im taking BEC next week. I just find BEC to be the hardest to get a grip on. At least with FAR I felt like if I made a mistake it was because of one single reason. However, with BEC it seems like a chain reaction when you make a mistake with a lot of different possibilities. The amount of formulas is killing me plus this part has the subjects that I really didnt like since I was in college: economics and cost accounting.

Nevertheless Im giving my best and doing whatever possible to pass it. It is my last part and I would really like to have this summer free to enjoy.

[Martin]

I might change my mind soon, since Im just covering Governance right now. This part might be harder than I thought,but there must be a reason why is the only part with the highest passing rate. In some quarters this difference is up to 12 percentage points. The average in the other 3 could be around 45% and then you see BEC with a 57% passing rate.

Through God all things can happen!

“You never fail until you stop trying.”
― Albert Einstein
When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people;as I grow older, I admire kind people.
“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

FAR= 72-84
Audit= 73-82
BEC= 74-75
Reg=77

[Anonymous]

Hi Martin – I do agree BEC is a lot of recognition but there is a lot of recalling too so it is not that simple. You may recognize the elements of a formula for a given MCQ but you may not recall the correct order to execute the formula or if the equation involves sum, subtraction, multiplication or division. It is just the amount of elements involved for those MCQ that require math that makes it harder. Perhaps the exam is easier than I think, who knows!

[Anonymous]

After FAR & AUD, BEC has been my least favorite to study, really hoping the IT questions on the exam are not as in depth as those in the study material.

[Anonymous]

The material is all over the place which makes the studying part difficult. I actually found it to be the toughest to study for, but the easiest to take. I didn't think there were as many curveballs as the other exams.

Just my experience. As you can see by my scores, I am no expert.

BTW Martin, how's the market in south Florida? I'd love to live there.

[Anonymous]

@ DoOver – Were most of the MCQ for BEC requiring math computations time consuming to solve?

[Martin]

.

Through God all things can happen!

“You never fail until you stop trying.”
― Albert Einstein
When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people;as I grow older, I admire kind people.
“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

FAR= 72-84
Audit= 73-82
BEC= 74-75
Reg=77

[Anonymous]

Most were you either knew the formula or didn't. I had a few bears in the tough testlets though. All sections from Becker were equally represented on my exam. BEC was the only exam I thought Becker prepared me for. Again, just my experience, and

yours will most likely be different

I think all these tests are super random and, although some don't want to admit it, based on some luck. By luck I mean getting topics that you are strong on. Or maybe I'm just still bitter from failing AUD. Which reminds me, time to get back to it.

thanks for sharing Martin.

[Icannotgiveup]

I'm studying for my BEC retake on 5/29 with a vengeance, I missed it by 1 point, I'm too bias to answer this question, lol.

A - 2/2/15 - 76: PASSED
B - 7/20/15 - 74, 73
R - 7/24/15 - patiently waiting for 8/25 score release
F - sometime in October

[Martin]

DoOver, the market in south florida is great for CPAs. Accountants here dont want to study, they just want to chill by the ocean and clubbing on weekends. And Im not talking about only young accountant, the age range Im talking about is from 25 to 50. I guess people that live in very hot climates do not like to take tough exams. To put it into perspective, I worked in 2 different fortune 1000 companies. The first one had around 70 Accountants and only 4 CPAs. As an incentive to have more CPAs in the accounting department, the company paid for Becker. One license for every two employees. Around 20 of my coworkers accepted the challenge, so the company bought 10 licenses from Becker. As an extra bonus, they were goind to give you 5K bonus and a 15% raise. Out of the 20 Accountants only one passed all 4 parts and it took him around 2 years.

The second company I worked for had 60 Accountants and only 3 CPAs (all managers). They did something similar as the other company,but in this company the bonus was going to be 10K. Only 10 Accountants accepted the challege, and not of them pass. We dont have that many fortune companies in S florida,so I think this was a good representation of our Accounting population. Search on indeed, and you will see what Im talking about.

Through God all things can happen!

“You never fail until you stop trying.”
― Albert Einstein
When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people;as I grow older, I admire kind people.
“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

FAR= 72-84
Audit= 73-82
BEC= 74-75
Reg=77

[Determined CPA]

BEC was hands down the hardest exam for me.

A - 75
B - 78 God is good.
F - 77 Answered prayers.
R - 84! Done!!

Paperwork sent - waiting for license!!
Still on a cloud and in shock. Through God, all things will happen.

[Thrawn]

BEC is easy enough, if you realize that you only need to know most of the info at a high level. Focus study efforts on the calculation items. Don't worry about the really off the wall stuff, maybe look them over one time but then move on. They can't ask super-complicated questions for MCQs anyway and they are limited by the shorter test.

BEC 87 Feb 14
REG 84 Apr 14
FAR 82 Nov 14
AUD 86 Feb 15

[Author]

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