I just got my final score last night for BEC and passed, so luckily I'll only have to take these one time. I'd like to thank everybody here for providing the sort of neurotic camaraderie that only a group of candidates could provide.
My few thoughts:
I used Becker, and was overall relatively happy with it. I'm not sure that it's worth the expense, though. I think if I had it to do over again, I'd try to shop around for a lecturer I really liked, and try to spend about 1/2 - 2/3s as much on materials...multiple choice questions are multiple choice questions, and I feel rather strongly that the main objective in studying is to hit the MCQs, hard.
I took the exams in the order FRAB, and I would absolutely recommend doing it. I thought that it was much easier to work through REG and AUD having taken FAR, and BEC had a couple things that I felt were easy after having taken REG (REG would have been reasonably difficult even if you take BEC before it). I scored 85, 91, 82, 86.
The thing I felt I did particularly wrong was I took too much time between the exams, and too much time to start. I waited about ten months after I had begun my first job to start ordering materials and applying to sit...I hit maybe two chapters of FAR before my NTS eventually arrived in March of this year. I then scheduled the exams for middle April, middle May, middle July, and late August. I kept noticing that I would spend at least two or three weeks of the six I had provided myself procrastinating, so there was really no point in doing that to myself, and just leaving this hanging over my head. I eventually moved up my BEC from August 25 to August 11, just because I realized I wasn't going to really use that extra two weeks, and I wanted the whole thing over with.
In retrospect, I would have scheduled them on 4/1, 4/20, 5/10, and 5/31 (roughly), and been home and cooled out two months ago. Easy to say now, of course, but I feel like even while working, it's just not that difficult to study 2-3 hours a day, which is all it really takes I think.
As far as studying time goes, I think that was one of the things I did the best. I kept track using a paper notebook of exactly how much time I spent in the software, and was particularly accountable to myself for breaks I would take for snacks or what have you. I took 91/51/33/31 (hours) for FRAB, so 206 hours total. I decided pretty early on that I did not care enough to go for the Watt-Sells award (I knew I'd need to study about 2-3x as much as I was going to for that, and just didn't feel like I was up to it), so I think I ended up studying exactly the right amount for me...I passed by comfortable margins. I would say, though, that I test really well, especially on standardized tests, and I've never had to study a particularly large amount. In fact, that was part of what made this difficult for me...I had never really studied long-term before this, I was usually a study all the week before exams in school kinda guy.
The one thing in regards to taking the exam itself that I don't see mentioned frequently is that if you manage your time well, on all of the exams with writing prompts, you should have plenty of time left over on simulations -- time you can use to research the memo. MCQs should be so ingrained in you from the hours of practice that they should take a bit less than one minute per question, on average. The only exam I used the time limit for was REG, but the reason I used the time limit was to perfect my writing response, which is what I did with the excess time I had on each exam. If you do the MCQs for FAR in 2.5 hours, like I did, you'll end up with an hour for each simulation...you should have enough time to work all of the tabs, and then spend about twenty minutes on each researching the writing question. In all six of my writing responses, I think I had done at least one search in the search tab relating to the writing response, and in at least one of them, probably had spent a good half hour reviewing the authoritative literature.
Anyways, I know this was long. I hope it helps provide inspiration for anyone that cares to read it. I know I have it a bit easy -- I called all of my relatives and friends to tell them I'd passed, and nobody had been in the least bit worried for me. At the same time, though, this is one of the things that you just have to buckle down and do, so I'm glad it's over with.
So, I guess the last thing is, I saw a lot of responses and questions here that demonstrated that the user hadn't really taken advantage of the resources available, both here and in links to all sorts of AICPA/NASBA materials. I feel like this is the biggest thing I've learned in my job: do your due diligence. The information to succeed on this exam is all readily available, assuming you purchase any comparable set of materials to study with. I suppose I saw this more when this wasn't the pretty new forum and instead was the comments, but I feel like anyone in the position to be taking this exam really has the ability to synthesize everything they need to complete the exam. Just win, baby.