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For what it is worth:
First – I am 42 years old and I just passed the CPA exam. I have an undergrad degree in Management and an MBA in Finance. I have worked in banking and in corporate finance/management. Due to a sale of my company and making a terrible rebound choice in jobs I found myself quitting and refocusing on the job market last summer. I ended up having to take several acct classes to satisfy the prerequisites and I now have a college transcript from hell! While that was not easy it was easier than tackling the tests in my opinion.
So I give you my background to set the table for my strategy. Being a bit older and less exposed to accounting in school, I felt a bit intimidated with some sections. However, I had lots of experience that helped me greatly. I was concerned about Auditing because I never took a class on it. However, I knew a great deal having managed audits from the company side. Everyone will find things they know more/less about than they thought they did with this amount of material.
You need to get a package that fits you the best. My personal hands on experience is with Becker, CPAExcel, WTB and Ninja Notes and Audio. At the end of the day, I settled into a routine of the short CPAExcel videos, reading the literature if I didn’t understand it fully, doing the MC and SIM questions. Then for review – I refreshed with the Ninja notes and Audio which seemed to enhance my understanding and at times freak me out when Jeff would give some saying about something that didn’t even ring a bell with me! Then the kicker would be to do MC questions until you just wanted to kick kittens. I steadily worked my way up until FAR and I did just over 1200 MC review questions and 50 SIMS the last week. IF you struggle in a section you make sure to include it in your next days group of questions until you feel better about it.
I can’t say what package is best or what will work for you but what I can say is the following if I were still trying to pass or just getting started I would work the MC’s 3 times as much as I did. If you think 600 questions would be a good review, 1800 would be better. Wiley Test Bank is an absolute must have item! It is the most important tool you can have in your study arsenal. Sorry Jeff, your products come in a very close second, but I also think they are a must have item as well. The test bank and the 10 point combo are essential to passing the tests on the first go round imho. In addition, both of these items are far less expensive than full blown packages. I do not believe that I could have passed the exam on these items alone but I would be almost willing to say someone fresh out of school with a lot of exposure to accounting classes might come close. They are that valuable.
Obviously the 10 point combo has its name for a reason but I would guess that if you spent the same amount of time to pass each exam but didn’t spend the time reviewing the last week – say the final 20 hours, your results would be 20 points less. It is that critical. I can’t stress this enough.
So in summary if I were tackling this monster again I would spend MORE time working problems and dedicate more time to that goal. If you are 2 weeks away from an exam, I would stop plowing through the material and I would just drill, drill, drill. I did not overlook the SIMS but at the same time there is only so much you can prepare for them in your review. What I mean is that you may work some SIMS that are similar in functionality on your exam but the chances that you get an exact match are not going to be very good imho. SIMS are also a way to blow through a huge portion of your study time. If your are in some form of a time crunch, they would be where you can save some time. Your knowledge and understand of the material from mastering the MCQ’s will actually serve you on the SIMS. And finally, everyone is different but you realistically will need to put in a minimum of 60 hours each section to have a realistic chance of passing the exam. Obviously, your chances should improve with more time and dedication. I would estimate that I spent between 60-120 hours on the various segments of the exam.
Hope this helps someone with being able to eat this elephant.
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