[TexasAggie]

So this isn’t a brag, but more a (1) warning to not do this and (2) advice if you feel like you have to. Please note I used Becker exclusively, but I’m sure most of my advice pertains to any similar CPA review course.

Why I did it:

I began work at a Big 4 firm on September 8th, 2014 and my firm gives a $5,000 bonus if all of the CPA is passed within the first year of employment. That meant I had to finish all 4 parts by September 8th, 2015 or in actuality August 31st, 2015 or the bonus would drop by $2,000. I found out on August 4th that I had passed REG which I had taken a month earlier. My initial plan was to get both FAR and REG knocked out in the July/August window as these were my last two and the extra $2,000 was very motivating despite the work load from studying that I knew would take a huge toll on me. My ultimate plan after taking REG on 7/8 was to study until the end of August and dominate FAR with almost two months of studying behind me. But leaving REG I felt terrible about it and accepted that I was going to have to re-take and therefore not get my bonus. Well on 8/4 I found out I passed with an 85 really going to show that you never know! At this point I hadn’t even touched anything for FAR and I had weddings the next two weekends that were going to take nearly 100% of the hours in those weekends off the table. During the second wedding, I realized how stupid I was being because even though I was wasting so much time, it was worth the $200 to at least try for the $5,000 bonus. So I decided I would start studying on Monday, August 17th and hope a spot would open up on 8/31.

The prometric scheduling game:

Is prometric.com/cpa the most unfunctional website ever or is it just me? That’s a tangent but I felt like I spent at least half an hour every day just trying to get to the point where I could access the available times. My ideal time was 8/31 during the latest time possible (5:30pm-10:30pm) to absolutely maximize the potential time to study. I checked every day 3-4 times a day just to see if it would open up at any of the testing centers in my city. At one point early on, a time opened up on 8/31 for 10am. I could have jumped on it but that would have meant sacrificing 7.5 hours of valuable last minute study time. So I reluctantly waited and watched it disappear by the next time I checked. On 8/23 I guess someone gave up and cancelled their 5:30pm appointment at the testing center that was closest to my house. So I jumped on it, obviously.

Time spent:

The testing window dates were the one stroke of luck I had going for me. 8/31 was a Monday and work has not been super busy this summer (and thankfully I was done with weddings) so I knew I could commit 100% of the 2 preceding weekends to studying my butt off. Starting on Monday 8/17 I stayed at my office when work was done (usually around 5:30pm) until 10:30pm. On Friday 8/21, I studied from 4pm-midnight. On saturday and sunday I was in our perfectly quiet office for at least 14 hours. It sucked waking up early and staying late on a weekend, but that’s what it took to get the bonus. This all totaled a little over 100 hours of studying plus review time on the test day (that’s sadly the only day I had to review).

Tips for actually studying on a hyper compressed timeline:

1) Keep a notebook as you go of areas that you find tricky. Try and write down how to solve it in your own words. Then when you review, refer to your own notebook rather than just the study materials that confused you.

2) If you come across an area you absolutely cannot understand, skip it after 30 minutes or so and plan on coming back to it. If you can’t get it it’s probably one of the harder sections and you need to make sure you have time to actually cover all the easy ones. When you run out of easy stuff and you start coming back to the hard stuff, it will hopefully be within a few days before the test. Then you can take the time to really really learn it and hopefully remember it a few days later. Obviously don’t do this too often or you will be overwhelmed at the end. But don’t spend all night on one specific area that might end up yielding 2-3 questions on the test.

3) If you come across a question that you think covers the concept very comprehensively, print it out and put it in a binder! Review these at the end instead of the hundreds of questions that you have available, most of which are hopefully easy or repetitive. Don’t be hesitant to print out a bunch. If each page you print out describes a concept well, it could mean an extra point or two on your exam!

4) Skip the SIMS. If you don’t know the material you are screwed on the SIMS anyways. Maybe look at a few of them to get a feel for them if you have never taking a CPA exam. But I passed all 4 sections using becker never looking at a single practice SIM.

5) If need be skip the videos completely, but still read your text and highlight it (based on the e-book on becker) to key in on most important areas. The videos essentially read the book back to you and tell you where to highlight. If there is something you just can’t get when you are reading through yourself/doing questions then refer to the lecture for that page and that page only to see if it’ll help.

6) Practice MC are the most important part of studying period end of story. Get as many in as you can. If you have 14 days till test time subtract one day for review, figure out how many questions there are total (let’s say 2000) and divide it. 2000/13 is about 150. So do at least 150 questions a day no questions asked. Don’t let yourself stop studying until you reach your magic number. If you fall behind you WILL NOT get caught up. If you can do way more than XX, then do it and use the extra time for review! But do the average per day no matter what.

7) I made an excel sheet that had the number of questions per section (not chapter, section and laid it out in a pretty format and chose a new color for each day. It was rewarding to see my progress each day and to visualize that my 150 daily questions actually represented 7.5% of what I was trying to accomplish

Tips for study habits:

1) Study at the office if it clears out. I didn’t ever like studying at home because the roommates, television, and my bed were all there to distract me. I also realized that leaving at 5:30pm took me 45 minutes to get home and leaving at 10:30pm took me 15 minutes or less to get home. Boom 30 minutes more to study were just created by not driving during rush hour.

2) Bring your meals with you to study. I began realizing that leaving to get dinner, even just going down the street to chipotle was at least a 30-45 minute ordeal that would keep me away from the books. Every minute counts. Maybe the food isn’t as good, but there are plenty of frozen options that take 3-4 minutes in the microwave to cook. Saved a lot of time for studying over the course of my 14 days by doing this and saved a bit of money as well!

3) Shut your phone off. It’s so easy to get lost in your smartphone. Just tell your loved ones you are going to be off the grid for a few hours and shut it off so you aren’t tempted.

4) Use the Becker program rather than the online suite and turn off the internet to your laptop. It’s so easy for me to ctrl-tab over to Chrome and start browsing facebook that I don’t even think about it some times. Turning off the internet removes this possibility and is a reminder that my time is limited and I need to study during it.

Tips to avoid the situation:

1) Don’t dwell on the last section you took, begin preparing for the next one. If you have to retake the previous one it won’t be until the next testing window. You won’t forget everything, but you could potentially pass another section along the way which can be a huge uplift to your study spirit.

2) Schedule in advance for a day/time that is later than you think you need. More studying never hurt anybody. But If I had scheduled for the test on 8/25 at the beginning of July, I would have ended up being screwed. Unless you have some important commitments or work deadlines, why not give yourself as many days as possible? Plus scheduling in advance prevents the stressful game of hoping someone else drops. Prometrics website is so bad that having to check it multiple times per day took away valuable time to study.

Overall point being: Don’t do this unless you feel like you have to. And if you do, then it is obviously possible to succeed, but you have to be truly committed and structured and learn how to truly maximize the time you have. I’m not a genius but was able to pull this off (barely with a 76). Good luck if you find yourself in my situation.

BEC: 87 (7/16/14)
AUD: 77 (4/6/15)
REG: 85 (7/8/15)
FAR: 76 (8/31/15)