[floacct]

So let me be the first to say that I appreciate all of the study help, info, and moral support in general that comes from everyone involved in this forum. This is an off topic post and the purpose is just some comic relief while enjoying another endless night of suffering through endless study materials. That being said, there are two things that just drive me nuts that I frequently encounter here!

First, when people say with absolute certainty that their testlets went med med hard…etc. It is impossible to tell this with certainty and one cannot accurately even identify which questions count and which ones do not. So please stop letting us know the difficulty of your tests with absolute certainty.

Second, when people say they prepared for over 200 hours and got blindsided by sims and had no idea what the sim was even referring to. I mean come on, 200 hours and you are getting asked about subjects you haven’t even at least heard of? What is the AICPA asking you about, how to split an atom? Or how to grow a tomato plant without water? I mean come on, just because you were not confident with your answer, please do not act like the exam sims contain topics that no one has ever even remotely heard of. Enough!

What drives you nuts?!?

[Amay]

I kind of agree with your first point since the difficulty of testlets are completely relative. However, on your second point, although it's unlikely that ALL of your SIMS were totally out of the blue, it is possible to see something you are completely unfamiliar with. Not all review courses hit everything that might be asked on the exam (although that is their goal), and there are those pre-test SIMS that the AICPA hits you with!

BEC: 73, 81
AUD: 85
FAR: 71, 77
REG: 74, 75...finally DONE! 😀

*This is my 2nd attempt at the CPA exam. For all of you who have failed this exam many times, given up on it, or taken a break like me, remember that it is still possible to finish what you started...failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently 🙂

[jopa16]

You'd be surprised what sims get thrown at you. All of mine have have been at least on subjects touched upon in my study materials, but I've had half a dozen sims where I had never done a problem like it in any of my study materials. Probably put in 200+ hours on both AUD and BEC and 300+ hours on FAR and REG.

REG 2/26/14 - 90
BEC 4/08/14 - 92
FAR 5/31/14 - 90
AUD 7/09/14 -

[Anonymous]

You know what would really drive you nuts? Taking the exam in here:

https://i.imgur.com/2BVi6l2.jpg

[mla1169]

To your second point I had a SIM on my third AUD attempt that drove me up a wall. Other review courses might have given more attention to it but when I got home and checked my Wiley book it was mentioned in one sentence in the appendix to the book. I guess I missed that SIM but can tell you that casual appendix reference in no way provided the answer to that particular SIM.

FAR- 77
AUD -49, 71, 84
REG -56,75!
BEC -75

Massachusetts CPA (non reporting) since 3/12.

[Anonymous]

I had one SIM on AUD that I didn't see in Kaplan (read the entire book) or Wiley (did every question in the test bank). However, I found the answer word for word in the AL so it didn't bother me. 🙂

What drives me nuts is when people ask for opinions on two courses of action and every post gives an opinion voting for Option B and the OP argues against it the whole time and then says, “I'm still going to go with Option A”. Why even bother asking the question? It also drives me nuts when the same questions are asked over and over and over. That happens in every group forum I am a part of and in every one there is a “search” feature. Use it!!!

[mla1169]

Nothing drives me more nuts than a response to a post saying x is not possible. You can say its not the best course to take, or propose an alternate method but pretty much anything at all is possible.

FAR- 77
AUD -49, 71, 84
REG -56,75!
BEC -75

Massachusetts CPA (non reporting) since 3/12.

[Anonymous]

^^Ditto to that!

[Anonymous]

I think I fit the bill for 3 out of 4 exams for your second point lol. I distinctly remember one of these question from REG. I won't mention details because we're not supposed to do that, but as soon as I got home from the exam, I searched my Wiley and Gleim books for the topic in the index for each. Not even a mention of the topic in either of the texts. I had to google it!

The frequency of some posters in the score release threads drives me nuts. I won't name names, but if you're posting almost every single minute, I think you need to take a break and go outside for a little while 🙂

[Anonymous]

^^I'm guilty of that. 🙂 Takes my mind off the waiting and once you get to “know” so many people on here that you are rooting for their passing scores…it sort of turns into a chat room. I think it got me locked out last time though so I'll be toning it down in Q3…maybe. 🙂

[Anonymous]

My pet peeve on message boards in general are threads that serve no purpose but to needlessly criticize other posters. Negative Nancys bum me out.

[Anonymous]

Meh. *I* like your thread, OP!

And I can truthfully say that I don't recall excessive posting from CPAMommy! But by all means, post away as much as you'd like. I just wish there was a way to filter out all of the posts that don't contain scores when I'm looking for scores from certain people.

[zieba]

What drives me nuts?!

People doing 2,000 MCQ's, 50 SIMS and preparing for 250+ hours…. then taking a 90 question “final exam” and asking I scored a 76, do you think I will pass?

And then a chorus of people chimes in with “of course!”, “no!”, “maybe”, and “yes!”. It's a [BEEEEP] collection of MCQ's, licensed from the same place as the other 2,000 you just did over a number of weeks. Yet, people are really that naive (my guess) to believe that that the last 90 are different from the first 1,910… drove me nuts.

AUD - 75*, 88 done 5/14! (*exp)
BEC - 74 , 77
REG - 65 , 76 (10 point combooo!!)
FAR - 69 , 75

Dr: perseverance
Dr: intelligence
Dr: luck
. Cr: . advisory score

[Anonymous]

Maybe I was being a little harsh.

As far as “med-hard-hard” goes, I think it is safe to say that when someone says they got “medium-hard-hard” testlets, it is implied that they are simply describing their perceptions and not declaring any certainty.

[Anonymous]

Ha Brian! I thought you were being funny. I guess I've been reading too many of Skynet's post and expecting that sarcasm from everyone. 🙂 I agree on the level of difficulty. It is subjective.

@zieba–That's so true! I remember when I first joined and I was so nervous because I had just failed AUD. I asked so many questions like, “Will I…?”, “Is this enough?”, etc. Now I know–none of us have a clue what the heck the AICPA does or how they think. Tricky SOBs.

[Anonymous]

CPAMommy, it was definitely snark. The line between sarcasm and earnestness is pretty fine on the Internet.

Regardless, no takebacks on the HiYa!

[Author]

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