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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I began Wiley module 35 – Partnership Taxation this morning. I worked an hour and a half holed-up in a conference room during lunch, and then another two hours after work.

I was proficient at some aspects of partnerships, but after watching Yaeger’s cram DVD section over it and working through the Wiley book with Dr. Yaeger, I have it nailed down. I did 32 multiple choice questions that Dr. Yaeger lists as an assignment and I scored a 94%. One of the the things that I like about Dr. Yaeger is that when he goes over a multiple choice question, he not only discusses the relevant facts about the question, but also gives examples of what would happen given an opposite fact pattern or an exception. This method of learning and reinforcement suits me perfectly.

My areas of weakness easily identified while working through the lecture:

1. Items not included in the adjustment for ordinary income on the Schedule 1065

2. Order of adjustments to basis in a distribution to arrive at an ordinary loss

3. Gain/loss rules for liquidating and non-liquidating distributions

4. The treatment of unrealized receivables for a cash-basis partnership

I have to admit that halfway through the lecture I began to hate partnerships. It had nothing to do with the book or the video – it was mostly due to the fact that I was tired of sitting. I sit all day at work and then I was sitting there watching a lecture on partnerships. Also, there’s just no way to spice up partnership taxation. I stood up and watched 15 minutes of the lecture standing and highlighting. It worked, I suppose because now I’m ready for corporations.

CPA Exam Hell Weak is right on schedule, surprisingly.

I have 2 sets of cram DVDs from Yaeger CPA coming in the mail and I am very excited about them. I also purchased the Wiley CPA texts that go with them.

The “cram” courses cover all of the important topics covered in the Wiley textbooks from start to finish.

I’ve been doing a lot of studying and I feel like I need that one last onslaught of review prior to taking the exams.

My plan: Beginning 3 days prior to my exams, I will begin the BEC cram. It’s 9 hours long and it will take me from start to finish in the Wiley book and whatever weak areas remain should be fortified at least to a point where I can score a 75. That’s all I care about – a 75. I scored a 71 in January.

I will wrap up the BEC cram two days prior to the exam and start with the Regulation cram. The REG cram is a beast (15 hours), which makes sense because Regulation covers a lot of ground between entity taxation and Business Law topics. I’ll finish the REG cram sometime around dinner time the night before the exam and will likely call it a night after that. A 24 hour cram binge will deserve some down time prior to my exams the next morning.

As I’ve shared before, if I don’t pass one of these sections, I have to re-take FAR and the prospect of doing that again should cause a person to do WHATEVER it takes to pass. I’m looking forward to getting my cram DVDs…



Link: Yaeger CPA Cram DVDs