After three long years, I have passed the CPA Exam.

I absolutely could not have accomplished this without God’s mercy, a supportive wife and kids, and Phil Yaeger. My wife and I are grateful to Yaeger CPA Review because they were the turning point in my exam experience. I honestly don’t think I would be sitting here today with 4 passing scores (and none expiring, apparently) without Yaeger, which is why I will always be grateful to them and will always recommend them.

THANK YOU PHIL.

I may not have any “MCQs” to study anymore and I may not be getting up at 4am, 4:30am, 6am, to check my scores (just in case!), but I will continue this blog and will always help other candidates in any way that I can via the blog or e-mail. Eight months ago, I was sitting here with one section passed that would soon expire (Oct 2006 – and it DID expire) and while I didn’t start out my exam journey very well (I didn’t really want to be a CPA because I didn’t want to sacrifice to get it), I finished strong and this is the greatest personal accomplishment of my life to date.

I have silenced my biggest critic – myself.

If you are still going through this exam and find yourself discouraged – Keep Moving Forward and never, ever, give up. Your day will come.

Thank you for reading.

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This isn’t my first rodeo and although I’ve sat for – and passed FAR before, that was two years ago and I didn’t take anything for granted this time. All totaled, I probably spent over 100 hours studying and worked 2000+ MCQs. Still, I was surprised, but not overwhelmed by any means with what I encountered today.

For starters, FAR is a mile wide and an inch deep. I expected certain topics to be hit more than others. That didn’t happen – it was a little bit of everything. I couldn’t tell you one topic that I felt was tested on more than others.

My first testlet was cake. It was easy and the questions were a sentence or two on average – very easy on the eyes and self esteem. I was cruising. I have a terrible habit however of clicking the “next” button or whatever it is and going back to check to see if my answer was still there…or going back and recalculating the numbers again. It’s a little obsessive-compulsive thing that I have going, I guess.

The honeymoon was short lived. The second testlet was murder and it was not pleasant. As a jaded veteran of this process, I knew I was doing well, so onward I marched.

Testlet three was pure misery. When I studied, I worked a lot of MCQs over just about every topic and every little exception or gotcha that I encountered, I wrote down in a narrative form that I would understand while reviewing 2 hours prior to my exam. It was this extra effort during my study process that got me through testlet three. It was slow going and difficult. I was also starting to tire about 70 questions in. The final 20 were a grind.

I didn’t take any breaks and tried to keep pushing myself as I saw the clock winding down. I stumbled into sim one with 55 minutes left. Not good. I wrote the memo first after briefly holding my breath to see what sim I had inherited. I hit the memo and worked my magic there. The research didn’t seem to understand my search terms. I probably would have had better luck using expletives. No dice on the research tab.

I did the tabs in simulation one and moved on to sim two with 20 minutes left. Yikes.

Just like simulation one, it was doable. I calmly knocked out the communication tab, cursed the research tab and didn’t look at it and moved to the first answer tab and then crickets…

The instruction tab was very vague and didn’t explain what I was supposed to do with tab one. I stared at it for five minutes, baffled, and then realized what I was supposed to do. The only problem was that I had two minutes left. I frantically filled in what I could, but time ran out.

All in all, I’m confident that I passed. I was prepared and I recognized the curveballs that they were throwing at me. Were parts of it frustrating? Absolutely. I felt better prepared for FAR than I was for REG and I worked harder at it. We’ll see how this one goes. I have a habit of throwing “hail marys” on exam day, but this was not the case. I worked hard and probably put in 60 hours of studying in the past two weeks and gave it everything I could. I have no regrets.

With the exam fresh in my mind, my one piece of advice is to not sit for the exam unless you have exhaustively studied for FAR and have done it right. They test you on everything and a realistic timetable for studying is around 100 hours, give or take. Some pass with more, some with less. 100 hours seems to be the norm according to people that I know who have also taken it.

For the first time in a long time – I’m doing nothing for a few weeks. I’m assuming that I passed and I feel like that assumption is warranted.

Thank you for reading.

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Since I bought myself (literally) an extra 10 days to study, I’ve set the software aside and have been methodically going through the Wiley book and doing Yaeger’s recommended questions per section. I work the problem and then read the answer. Instead of flipping back and forth from the questions to the answers, I have found it very helpful to tear out the answers and staple them together.

So that I don’t lose my place and also to gauge my progress, at the start of each module I take Yaeger’s list of recommended questions and write all of the question numbers down on a small piece of notebook paper and then write the answers down on the sheet instead of the book. This can be tedious and patience testing (yes, I get up and walk around after every 10-15 questions it seems), but I have found that it is very effective in learning the material.

When I get a question wrong, I write out the relevant facts that I missed or had forgotten in a Word Document and separate it by module. If you can spend a week doing something similar and then switch to the software a few days before your exam to test yourself on weak areas, I think you’ll find that you have learned a lot. Doing this old school method of studying allows you to “work out the kinks” so to speak and before you know it, you will *know* the material. It can get boring and it takes time, but I am confident that it will pay off.

Currently, I’ve worked through Modules 7-10 in the Wiley book and hope to be done with them all (they go up to 20) by Friday night. My exam is Tuesday November 4th.

Thanks for reading.

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I may have been a bit too cavalier about cramming for FAR. It’s one thing to go through all of your material…it’s another to actually review it. So, I hit the eject button and decide to reschedule to November 4. Easy enough, right? Maybe not.

In my new e-mail confirmation from Prometric it reads

RESCHEDULE / CANCEL POLICY

After you have made an appointment for an examination section you may find it necessary to change or cancel an appointment. Be aware that you may be required to pay a reschedule fee or forfeit your examination fees, depending on when you notify Prometric of the change or cancellation. Changes made 5 to 30 days prior to your appointment will be assessed a $35 fee. Changes made less than 5 days prior will be assessed $95.40. Note: Any changes made 24 hours or less prior to your appointment will forfeit your fees and you will need to reapply to your board of accountancy or its designated agency. Please see your Candidate Bulletin for more information.

Did I just royally screw up? Of course – I can’t call anyone at Prometric until tomorrow. Maybe my state board will have mercy on me.

update: I spoke with Prometric and until I hear otherwise from them, I’m set for 11/4 and won’t have to pay the extra $280. I won’t be surprised if I get a call from them though.

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I worked until 1am last night wrapping up the Yaeger CPA Review FAR Disc 9 and wasn’t sure what today would bring. Twice within the span of 4 hours I had my payment info loaded onto Prometric’s site and a new date selected (November 4) and all I had to do was hit “confirm” and put my exam back a week or so, but I just couldn’t do it for some reason.

I still had discs 10, 11, 12, and 13 to go as of this morning. Thankfully, work was slow (and my boss is very nice), so I sat at my desk and worked through discs 10-13 throughout the day and into the evening and I am now done with Yaeger’s FAR program. Was it easy to sit there for 12+ hours (I worked each 4 hour DVD in about 3 hours using the time stretch feature on my laptop)?

No, but it was worth it.

I am taking tomorrow off from work, going to the local coffee shop (what a cliche, right?) and plan on spending a good 12 hours tomorrow working MCQs and sims…and I’ll be ready.

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I gave in and decided to push my exam back a week so that I would have a calm week to review and do MCQs. They wanted $95 to reschedule my exam. I decided to wait until Wednesday to decide what to do. If I can plow through the rest of my lectures and have all day Thursday (I’m taking a day off from work) to do MCQs and review, I’m going for it.

If I’m not done with my DVDs by late Wednesday, I’m postponing it a week. I’m ready to be done with this thing, but also don’t want to rush and be posting again in January about an upcoming FAR exam.

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I’m only on Disc 6 out of 13 of Yaeger’s FAR program. I was out of town last week for work…got minimal studying done because I was…lazy. Yada Yada.

I have a only a few days to get through this program. Most would say that I’m too behind to still take the exam on Friday. I’m not most people. Don’t underestimate my ability to cram like a madman and have success. See: AUD (35 hours).

Stress and anxiety is exactly what I need to study and pass this exam. Why couldn’t I just be a normal candidate and do it the right way?

Back to Pensions…

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I knew coming out of the exam that I had passed, but I didn’t expect this. I’m paranoid so I’m whiting out my info until I have my certificate in hand.

Thank you GOD.

Thank you Dr. Yaeger and everyone at Yaeger CPA Review!

Update: I got my paper confirmation on September 22 – a timely six days after my score appeared online.

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I took the weekend off from studying after taking REG last week and have since been tinkering with the idea of studying for Financial Accounting and Reporting, but have so far found limited success in this endeavor. I’ve been pondering what exactly could motivate one to start studying for a section of the CPA Exam that they’ve already passed and I think I found the answer:

PAY $280 FOR IT.

(rant) The 18 month window is absolute garbage. It’s not even 18 months. Each testing window is 2 months long and you can only sit once in a testing window. After each window, NASBA takes a one month breather and doesn’t allow exams and it STILL takes as long as 9 weeks (a co-worker of mine sat for his exam on July 3rd and as of today, September 3rd, his score is still not posted online) to get scores back. Of course it’s up to each state BOA to determine the window of time in which to pass, but the 18 month window is fairly uniform. Naturally, your 18 months starts when you sit for your exam, not when you get your score. Nice. If I ever find one aspect of the CPA Exam that is candidate-friendly, I will be more than happy to pass it on. I am also completely ignoring the fact that if I would have studied more for REG I wouldn’t be in this mess, but I am taking no accountability for my actions or test scores. It must be someone else’s fault.(/rant)

After I entered my payment information and submitted it, I immediately thought of all of the things that $280 would buy. In no particular order:

-A new gas grill
-An XBOX360
-4 family trips to see “Dinosaurs on Ice” complete with stuffed dinosaurs wearing skates for each child
-NFL Sunday Ticket (now you’ve hit a nerve)

It made me so mad that I promptly pulled out my Wiley FAR book, popped in Yaeger’s 1st FAR DVD and I’m off and running.

Something else to spur my motivation is as soon as I get my NTS back, I’m scheduling it for mid-October.

I will never pay for another NTS again.

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Today’s testing experience was a great success, I think. I was better prepared than I’ve been for any section I’ve taken (and passed) and I felt like I knew most of the answers – even the exception to the exception questions where the obvious answer was wrong. There were a couple of multiple choice that I felt like were beyond the scope of what a normal person would study for the exam – left field topics, but I’m guessing that they were the “test” questions that don’t count.

I feared that I would get some psycho simulation, but they were both topics that your review material should cover. One of them was very involved and challenging, however. Overall, it was a surprisingly painless testing experience. I was even starting to hope for a phlegm-hacking neighbor to spice things up, but it never happened.

I don’t know if other people do this, but I can answer a question – and be POSITIVE that it is right, but sit there and waste a minute staring at it for fear that somehow it is wrong. I also do this thing where I will answer a question, click to the next one and then go back to it 3x for fear that my answer changed in the transition.

I’m sure that I’m the only one who does this. Maybe I’m an obsessive-compulsive exam taker…sort of like Nicholas Cage in “Matchstick Men” where he has to tap his feet three times or whatever inside a room before walking outside. I just know my score will go from 86 to 66 if I don’t click back 3x.

Also – at end of my second sim, the timer ran out before I could click “Done”. I asked the staff person at Prometric if this affected anything and he said that the exam saves itself as you enter answers. I figured as much, but needed the affirmation that I didn’t just lose 15% of my exam.

I’m in study mode…I put in over 35 hours of study time this week. Tomorrow, the office is empty and unless I have a project or something tangible (value-added) to do, I’m starting Yaeger’s FAR, Disc One.

Now, only one thing stands in the way of me passing – and that’s a section I’ve already passed.

Thanks for reading.

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I have put in about 30 hours of studying since Sunday night. I had the good fortune of work being extremely “slow” this week for me, so guess who sat at his desk and studied all day Mon-Wed? While going through Yaeger’s DVD course, I filled a legal pad with notes. Starting Monday, I re-wrote those notes and spent about 2 full days doing it. I knew I would forget all of those little tax nuances and I was right. It was like I was re-learning the material.

I took Wiley’s practice exam tonight with their software and scored a 75 on the MCQs and a 63 on the sims (Shareholder Contribution to Corp and Indiv Tax). I went back through the incorrect answers and I had made some stupid mistakes and on some questions I was leaning one way when I should have been leaning the other. My exam is at 1pm tomorrow so I will take another practice exam in the morning in all likelihood. I have several sims that I want to go over as well.

Practice exam scores need to be taken with a grain of salt. While I scored 75% (45/60), I think the actual exam would have been scored higher. For one, the better you do, the more points each question is worth (and they also get more difficult). Secondly, the exam I took tonight was evenly weighted between Bus. Law and Tax, wheras the real exam will be around a 70/30 split favoring tax I think (if you include ethics and accountant’s liabilities as Bus Law).

I am much stronger in tax than I am in Business Law. I can isolate a section like Secured Transactions or Agency and score in the 70s, but I can score in the 80s if I isolate Corps or Gift Tax or something which works to my advantage. I know that I am ready for the exam – I’ve put in the time and I know the material. I’m just having last night anxieties.

REG is a predictable crapshoot – a sweet little paradox. You KNOW what is going to be more heavily tested content-wise, but then you get into the exam and find that they are majoring on the minors for a whole testlet. It’s maddening. You can study your tail off and walk out of there humbled just the same. Then again – people pass it everyday like it’s nothing. At least this time I know what a 1231 asset is going into the exam.

In closing - I was walking around my office floor tonight and saw that one of our tax guys was hunched over his laptop – working late like he always is. I popped in his cube all confident like a 2 year old sporting his new “Super Hero” underwear after graduating from diapers and said “1245 gain – Ordinary or Capital!?!?!”

Old tax guy: Ordinary.

Me: 1231 loss – capital or ordinary!?!?!

Old tax guy: Capital.

Me: AHHHH – it’s Ordinary!

Old tax guy: Well, sort of…you have this thing called a ‘lookback’ provision…(commence 20 seconds of tax speak that caused my mind to wonder all the while I nodded in complete agreement)…ahh nevermind – that’s beyond the scope of the exam…

Me: Uhhh…I better go study some more.

Back to diapers…

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Although I’ve scored two consecutive 74s on Regulation and own Yaeger’s cram DVD (I didn’t use it on my last attempt aside from Corps because I was swamped with BEC and up against the deadline or I lost FAR), I made a deal with myself that I would slow down and go back through REG from start to finish and watch every second on Yaeger’s 9 DVD REG course, and that’s what I’m doing.

So far, I’ve been through Individual Tax, Transactions, Gift/Estate/Trust Tax, and Partnerships. Along the way I’ve filled up 50 pages of a legal pad with notes, which I review periodically.

Today and tomorrow will be filled with (aside from an inconvenience called “work”) Corporations and then Business Law and Accountant’s Responsibilities/Ethics this weekend.

On Monday, I’ll go through all of my notes and begin working all of Dr. Yaeger’s recommended questions from the Wiley book (keep in mind that upon completion of the DVD course, you’ve already done hundreds of MCQs). I’ll work some sims, do a few final exams, and then I’ll be ready to go.

As always, thanks for reading.

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I’m 18 days out from my exam and I intend on being completely through my REG lecture DVDs in a week. Yaeger’s REG program has 9 DVDs and I’m on Disc 2. Hmmmm.

I’m a prodigious procrastinator and when you couple this with the fact that I’m a news/sports junkie, I tend to goof off instead of study when I’m using my laptop. Lets see…Like Kind Exchanges…AMT Preference Items…no – I know…I’ll see what’s on the Drudge Report or ESPN.com.

To combat this, I’m going on a sort of mini-fast from the internet the next 7 days. As I’ve posted before, you can watch Yaeger’s DVDs on your home DVD player. Most review programs leave you chained to a computer and I am thankful for this because I need to unplug and focus. This is probably a shocker, but it’s painful to study for a test you were one point from passing twice in a row. Cry my a river and shut up and study, right?

I’m limiting my e-mail/blog/news perusing to less than 10 minutes a day until I get through all 9 DVDs. My goal is one DVD (about 4 hours) a day.

If you’re a fellow procrastinator and you find yourself goofing off instead of studying – unplug for a week (if you have to use your computer to study – disable your wireless access or disconnect your cable modem) with me.

I’ll post a status update in a week. By then, I should be FINISHED with the REG DVDs and pounding non-stop questions. If that is the case, then I will be 90% ready for the exam and all I have left to do is work sims and take practice exams.

Until then…

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I scheduled my Quarterly 74 on Regulation for…

Thursday August Twenty-Eight, Two Thousand and Eight

Hors d’oeuvres and cash bar to follow.

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It has been tough to drudge up the motivation to jump back into REG and my goal of taking the REG exam 7/7 might be a bit optimistic now. However, I am into disc 2 of Yaeger’s 9 disc REG set and am soaking up Module 33 – Individual Income Tax and am strengthening what were previously weak areas.

As I follow Phil and take notes in the margins, highlight lines, and flip back and forth between the text and questions, my marked-up, torn-up Wiley book will likely resemble gang violence come mid-July.

I am still targeting 7/7, will not schedule my exam until I know that I will be ready on exam day. My modest study goal is 2.5 hours a day on the weekdays and 4 hours on Sat/Sunday.

Thanks for reading.

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I peeked into the mailbox yesterday and sure enough some spam from some company called “NASBA” was in there.

I opened it up and before I looked (true story) I prayed “God, please make this say that I passed” (or something to that effect). Instead, my eyes zeroed in on some heartless line about “no credit” for the FARE section.

Score: 74 Result: FAIL

I then looked at the diagnostic section and what do you know, the ONE section I decided to watch for the Yaeger Cram as I’ve previously stated is “Entity Taxation” and I doubled my freaking score from a 40 to an 80.

It was the only thing I studied (spent almost all of my time on BEC) for REG because – heh – afterall, I scored a 74 before and had this thing in the bag.

Wouldn’t you know – Ol’ Reliable – Individual Taxation, which I scored a 93 on before dropped 30 points.

At that point I said “Get behind thee Satan” and threw it away.

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…that’s what I keep telling myself to counter the miserable “hey you were one grade point from passing the CPA Exam” voice in my head. I look at my REG book and can’t hardly stomach the thought of opening it again.

Alas – my march toward a July 7th REG re-take starts tomorrow.

If you hear a loud rumbling through your neighborhood, that’s the Yaeger War Machine heading my way. I radioed in for reinforcements and ordered their complete REG and FARE DVD sets. It’s time to get medieval (Pulp Fiction).

I’m 5 weeks out from my next exam and I’m going to see what kind of a score I can get if I truly dedicate myself over the course of a month or so. No more hysteric uber-cramming one week from the exam. I’m going to methodically go through the entire Yaeger DVD package disc by disc and the Wiley book page by page.

I’m setting a realistic study goal of 20 hours per week. It will take some maneuvering to get this done…an hour or so before work…and a few hours at night after the kids go to bed. A four hour block on Saturday and Sunday will also be in order. We’ll see what needs to happen schedule-wise.

I’m over the 74…other than checking it periodically to see if it was a mistake

I’m dedicating 100 hours to passing REG and it starts tomorrow. If anyone wants to keep pace and study with me – let me know.

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Click here for additional details.

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I passed BEC this window with an 80.

I failed REG again with a 74.

I lost my FARE score.

I’ve had all day to think about this before I posted anything on it. I’ve run the natural gambit of emotions….shock/disbelief…pity…anger… and finally resolve… determination…motivation.

Ironically, less than 24 hours before receiving my score, I received an e-mail from someone who failed FARE back to back with 74s and I responded with this:

“First let me say that you are SO CLOSE! Don’t give up! When you have the letters CPA by your name those two 74s won’t even matter.”

Little did I know that I would be needing that very same advice.

I don’t blame anyone for my failure on the exam but myself. Truth be told, I spent 85% of my time studying for BEC because I was scared of failing it a fourth time. I didn’t even make it through Yaeger’s cram DVD. I watched the section on Partnerships and Corps and then skipped the rest to work BEC extra hard. I figured that I scored a 74 last time overall…scored a 93 in individual tax…my weakness was entity taxation, which I went over, so I thought I had done enough to pass with a 75.

I was wrong, apparently. Would I do anything different if I could have a mulligan? Not really…I had a month to prepare for an exam that I have never put much time into (BEC) and an exam that covered a lot of material (REG). My FARE score was going to expire in a month because when I passed FARE, I celebrated by taking a year off – which was a big mistake, obviously.

I’m going to start on REG again tonight instead of moping around like I’m tempted to. I’m going to work every question in the Wiley book and watch the Yaeger cram DVD the whole way through and spend the entire month of June doing it.

Then, after taking REG, I will devote July and August to FARE. I have ordered the complete Yaeger FARE package and will have two months to study for FARE again and I will take it at the end of August. I needed to brush up on FARE anyway. The prospect of being a “CPA” but knowing that I had forgotten a lot of the FARE material just didn’t seem right to me.

I’m going to do it right and learn the material – not just memorize stuff to regurgitate during a 4 hour exam.

This setback will be a blessing in disguise and victory will be that much sweeter when I achieve it.

Thank you for reading.

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The good news: REG scores are out.

The bad news: I don’t have mine.

The weird news: A friend of mine who took the exact same section in the exact same room on the exact same day had his score yesterday.

My score must have been so fantastic that they didn’t think posting it electronically would do it justice.

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It appears that the REG scores will be the last section released in the first wave of scores. The wait is killing me. I heard a rumor that scores could be released last night, so I checked 4 times in the middle of the night.

Clicking on the “submit” button to get your score and the 1/2 second delay before it reads “Error. Score not found.” should be outlawed by the Geneva convention. Pure torture.

Apparently, the database doesn’t realize that if I pass, I’m almost a CPA (ethics exam), and if I fail – I lose FARE and I have to take REG again.

My guess is that they’ll be out by Friday.

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Finally!

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After sleeping on it (and thinking about it all evening), I’m thinking/hoping that I was getting tripped up on test questions (i.e. fake questions that don’t count – the AICPA just uses them to gauge whether or not they’ll use them in the future as “real” questions).

I felt like I knew the material pretty well. I studied a lot harder for this exam than the one that I scored a 74 on, but it felt like I was getting question after question on my weak areas. Plus, the dude next to me was doing that phlegm-clearing throat hack that you hear people do in public and you think to yourself “wow – he just really doesn’t care, does he.” It was loud and I despite the fact that I had those ear-blockers on, every time he did it, it sounded like we were being carpet-bombed and I had to re-read the question I was on. Also, he was getting frustrated with himself apparently and would mutter words and throw his hands up in the air like you do when a ref blows a call at a football game, which was slightly amusing to me. Maybe he had the same question bank?

After having a few hours to think about it, I knew more questions than I was giving myself credit for and I think I might have done ok after all. When you’re plugging along in the exam and you hit a few roadblocks, you start thinking “here we go again” and it’s easy to get down. I tend to think to myself that if I miss one question, I’ll fail, so a problem here or there that I have never seen or don’t know tends to overshadow my successful answers.

I won’t be surprised if I got a 70…and I will be equally unsurprised if I score an 80. Like I’ve stated already, it was a very difficult exam and I chose to take it late in the day, which may have compounded my frustration because I was tired. I had been studying for 3 days straight and then took BEC…studied for 3 hours more and took REG and I was having trouble focusing.

Pass or fail, I used the right study program and if I have to take it again, I’m going to focus on REG and nothing but REG for a good month and a half.

Then, I’ll start on FARE.

Until then, I’ll just assume that I passed…nothing else you can do.

Thanks for reading.

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I took REG this afternoon and it was an absolute MONSTER. It goes down as the most mind-blowingly frustrating exam experience I’ve had. Every tax question was hard. Complex question after question. It sucked so bad that I looked forward to the next business law question.

I didn’t finish one tab of my last sim. I made sure to score easy points on the essay and research tab, though.

Either I’m an idiot or I was doing well and the difficulty of the problems were kicked up a notch (for the uninitiated, the better you do, the harder the questions get – but are worth more points). Probably a little bit of both.

I came out of the Exam humbled and feeling like a moron. On the other hand, whenever I have left and exam thinking “hey, that wasn’t so bad after all…” – I failed.

Who knows.

I’m just glad that it’s over – for now.

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I took BEC this morning. It took me about 40 minutes of waiting to get checked in, but oh well.

I think I smoked the exam…we’ll see. I felt this way with AUD and that turned out OK. You never really know, though.

Financial Management has always been my weak area. I’ve never wanted to study it so I’ve always ignored it. THANKFULLY I did just about every question on Yaeger’s list of “minimum” questions to do. That prepared me.

I also followed their advice and did every single IT question in the Wiley book and that paid dividends as well.

The exam followed the content weights released by the AICPA, so no surprises really.

One thing about BEC is that memorizing terms won’t cut it. They want you to actually apply the knowledge. Odd.

REG is in 2.5 hours…

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BEC is up first thing in the morning. I can roll out of bed and score a 71 on BEC, so to end my streak, I’ve been hitting areas that I’ve always ignored (Financial Management…I hate studying for it, so I go into the Exam and try to fake it).

I did 307 IT questions today. I could write a book about the “Joys of Electronic Data Interchange”.

In the past, I’ve also tried to limp my way through Econ. I did a ton of problems on elasticity calculations.

One regret is that I have spent a disproportionate amount of time on BEC rather than REG. I hit Corporations pretty hard (my week part when I scored a 74 last time) and I have a 5 hour break in-between exams, so I’ll come back and gorge myself on individual tax, estates/trusts and whatever else.

I was tempted to give it the old college try and pull an all-nighter, but I know better than to do that.

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I’ve done the math and mapped out my final week of studying/cramming/praying and it goes something like this:

(keep in mind that I’m not a very structured person…I have a tendency to live by default and not design, per se, so this may be difficult for me).

This is hardcore (to me it is, anyway), but I’m only doing this for a week.

(95 hours of work + study…)

Sunday night: Lights out at 11pm (I usually stay up til 12:30am or 1)

Monday:
Study 5:30-7am (I usually get up at 7am…I live 10 min. from work)
11:30-1pm (extended lunch)
5-6:30pm
6:30-7 – briefly remind the kids that I exist
7-11pm
(6.5 hours)

Tuesday: repeat

Wednesday: repeat

Thursday: Family time starting at 7pm (4.5 hours)

Friday: same as Thursday, but no studying after work or in the evening (3 hours)

Saturday: 5:30-7am, 8-11:30, 12-4, 6-10 (14 hours)

Sunday: same as Saturday

Monday: Exams – BEC and REG

Total studying from Monday-Sunday: 55 hours + a full work week.

Is this realistic? Yes, I think so.

Will it be terrible/worst thing ever? Absolutely.

Will I pass if I do this: Without a doubt.

If anyone out there is slaving away this week, know that there’s someone else as miserable as you. Needless to say, I went to the grocery store and stockpiled coffee today.

I guess it all comes down to this:

How badly do you want to be a CPA?

It’s time to be done with this thing.

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I can use slang and double-negatives when referring to BEC because there’s no essay or writing portion of the exam – at least not until 2009.

I consider BEC as the second-hardest section of the CPA Exam.

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I’ve been running the numbers trying to devise a battle plan for REG and BEC. I did the math and I have 4,706 REG multiple choice questions and 2,790 BEC questions at my disposal. By the way, that’s 7,496 questions - all on software. I’ve never done all of the questions in preparing for an exam (or even came close) and that may be my downfall.

I have one chance to get it right on each or I have to re-take the dreaded FAR exam. In order to complete all of the MCQs once in the next 30 days, I have to average 250 questions a day. Granted, Saturday and Sunday naturally lend themselves to more study time, but it is going to be a grind doing that many questions in study mode for the next 30 days with work and family on top of it all.

It will be a sacrifice, but when I’m done – I’m done.

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Maybe it is just my imagination, but I thought the numbers were green when I passed FAR? Green…Gray…Burnt Umber…I’ll take anything 75 or above. I really needed this one. I seriously may have taken a looonnngggg hiatus I hadn’t passed.

Thank you GOD/JESUS!

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I double check my scores each day in hope that they will magically change and today I got my wish. My “71″ turned into an “Error: Score not found.”

Maybe they meant 81 and not 71.

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My FAR score expires in April and I know this much as of today:

I must pass BEC and REG or I have to re-take the beast known and Financial Accounting and Reporting.

Ugh.

Maybe I shouldn’t have celebrated passing FAR by taking a year off? Just a thought.

I hate the BEC exam with a passion. It’s the most seemingly benign exam, yet I think it’s the worst of them all.

I also have to take REG again. I got my score comparison in the mail today, so I know at least why I scored a 74.

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I scored a 74 on the CPA Exam. It felt like a 44.

Does a more gut-wrenching number exist?

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