[Da Bears]

Didn’t quite know how to word the title but my experience has been (FAR,AUD) that the exams tend to hit you hard in some areas and none in others. For example, review courses will breakdown that Topic A,B,C, D, E make up 20, 10, 30, 35, 5 percent of the exam, respectively, and in my experience I get slammed in Topics A-C, and D/E are basically non existent. I do believe this causes candidates to know all areas well, if study time is ample, or if not, forcing people to take calculated risks by neglecting areas, which in my opinion makes the exam that much harder. Anyone else experience this?

Please remember those disclosure rules when you respond…….

FAR- 8/14/12 91
AUD- 10/16/12 88
BEC- 11/07/12 92
REG- 01/05/13 86
NIU CPA Review

[Anonymous]

I would agree with that. I'm sure it's intentional to some degree, they have to continue to adapt the exams to maintain a degree of difficulty. As the test taker it can be frustrating especially after all the time you have put into studying and preparing for a certain topic, but it's probably the best way for the AICPA to ensure you know your stuff.

[Faintear]

I just took the Audit exam this past Saturday and I swear 85% of the questions that I got was on one topic.

Also for FAR, it was disappointing to see how much time I spent on one topic only to see the question show up only once when I took the test.

[Anonymous]

It's almost like they have our computers bugged or something. If you don't nail down a topic to the point that you are dreaming about it, then it seems like 1/2 of the exam is on that one topic! Very weird.

[Whatdidyou]

Well the exams are adaptable. Everyone gets a different distribution of questions.

I think if you are doing well and get a difficult testlet, your exam is going to have more questions that have, historically, been more difficult to pass (this is what AICPA says actually happens). Based on that, I always surmised that “more difficult to pass” = hard to understand/complex OR previously new material OR material not traditionally taught in the classroom OR obscure topics.

In other words, you could get a whole lot on one topic, which becker says is only tested 3% of the time, because you are doing well. So, if you are getting a whole lot of obscure/difficult questions, you are probably doing well.

REG - Passed!!
BEC - Passed
FAR - Passed
AUD - Passed

Study Materials: Becker basic course

[Da Bears]

Makes sense, hopefully you are right. That was my experience in FAR and I scored well so I'm hoping this positively correlates 😀 to the other exams.

FAR- 8/14/12 91
AUD- 10/16/12 88
BEC- 11/07/12 92
REG- 01/05/13 86
NIU CPA Review

[Author]

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