[Anonymous]

Ok – I have a random question here. I see that many people post that they studied 137 hours for Reg, or 89 hours for BEC, etc. My question is – how do you know how long you studied? Are you saying “I’m going to study 3 hours a day, every day” or are you timing your study time? IE – start the clock when the book opens, and stop the clock when you’re done for the day?

I’m just curious. I studied (and sat) for REG in early July – I started studying in April, and can honestly say, I have no idea how long/much I studied.

I realize that everyone is different, and everyone has their own study habits, but I’m just wondering if there’s a general recommendation of “study 3 hours a day” or “study til you drop” or “Study only on days that have a “t” in them”.

Just curious – and thanks for your responses and recommendations in advance.

[Lindrobe]

I made a schedule for myself in Excel (i.e. 2 hours M-F, 4 hours on Sat-Sun) that totaled my hours for each section. I rarely strayed from the schedule, but updated my spreadsheet the few times that I did so that I had an extremely accurate total for each section.

FAR 12/3/14, 87
AUD 2/3/14, 90
BEC 4/1/14, 88
REG 5/27/14, 94

Licensed CPA, Indiana

"Successful people do things that unsuccessful people don't want to do"

[Anonymous]

I have given estimates on my study time for each test and that is truly what they are, estimates. For BEC I estimated that I studied about 80 hours…21 hours on lectures and another 60 hours reviewing notes and working MCQ based on how many weeks and average hours per week I was able to study. I wouldn't put a lot of faith in the exactness of anyone's study time because it is not necessarily a question of how many hours one sits down to study, but how many of those hours are actual QUALITY studying that really count. You could sit for 3 hours a night and count it that way or you could estimate that out of those 3 hours a night you only really got 2.5 hours of QUALITY studying each night because the other half hour was spent looking for something in your notes, using the bathroom, answering your phone, etc. I seriously doubt anyone can truly calculate exactly how many hours they studied, but I'm sure there is an APP out there for it. 🙂 Don't focus on the number of hours, but on actually getting through all the material, working the MCQ, and reviewing everything. You could do it in 50 hours where someone else did the same amount of work in 80 hours.

[ymmit]

just estimates based on days studied X estimated average study time per day.

You've never audited management estimates?! lol same thing. Test for reasonableness.

Licensed CPA!

[Monkey Wrench]

Don't forget us CPAexcel folks have timers when you are in a study area, as does ninja MCQ. then you just add a reasonable amount to how much you just rewrote notes/reread books etc. and voila you got your total time studied.

So for me my schedule would look like this

CPAexcel 100 hours

Ninja MCQ 60 hours

Flash Cards 5 hours est

rewriting notes 10 hours est

_______________________

Gross Study Time 175 hours

Less: falling asleep (12)

---

Net Study Time 163 hours

[Author]

Replies