AUD Passed! Committed to Passing FAR Next
Fred is a NINJA CPA Blogger.
Happy New Year everyone!
Late again on my Blog – someday I will get it right. Holidays were busy, work has been hectic and I have started to cram for FAR. As usual I am stressed out.
Has anyone else passed a part of the exam and then sat back and relaxed instead of hitting the next part? It took me two weeks in December just to open a book after the AUD.
As soon as I got my test score (passed) I took a vacation from the books. Not a real vacation and not without guilt either. I should have just given myself a week off and then started to study again.
I would have at least enjoyed that week and could have been on time with this blog too. Instead, I kept procrastinating to the point that I could not sleep knowing that FAR was right around the corner and tax season too!
So here I am preparing for FAR and tripping all over Acquisitions methods for Goodwill in regards to IFRS and GAAP. Brain dead really. I cannot move through these questions with any real speed and what should have taken me 4 hours to do a homework assignment is taking me days!
So I am behind once again in my studies and cannot take time off from work (tax season) to catch up. So I did what any sensible CPA candidate would do.. I pushed the exam.
I was scheduled for Feb 3 and now am scheduled for Feb 23. I just hope I am complete by Jan 31 so I can just review through February.
I also went out and bought a pair of Bose QC15 noise cancelling headphones! Not sure if anyone has tried them but I cannot begin to describe what a silence barrier they create.
When I sat for AUD I was given a pair of passive over the ear headset to just kill light noised in the already silenced room. I was relieved with that and was able to concentrate.
Well, my house is noisy and at this point I am easily distracted. I figured I would give it a whirl. They work great and I find concentration comes easier for me. You should hear the NINJA Audio on them – good stuff.
As far as studying is concerned, I find I am more distracted this time around and am not as disciplined. If not for the temperature outside being 7 Degrees (Boston) I surely would of found something more appealing outside to distract me.
On a good note, the managing partner was quite pleased on my grade for AUD. I took the last couple of weeks off and studied my butt off. My guess is he thought I would not use the time wisely.
In any event, I received a reasonable raise and as I pass each part, I am invited to come into his office and ask for additional compensation. In addition, once I pass all the parts, I can come in again and renegotiate my salary.
I was pretty pleased with that. This partner is extremely difficult to impress but I managed to display a commitment to succeed.
And that is the tone for this evening – a commitment to succeed. I imagine I will not remember 3 of the best Patriot games I passed up so I could study, or the brunches with my family members, or dinner and a movie, etc. It will happen again and I will be available once I pass the exam.
So I remain committed and determined to succeed. A good night to all and a wonderful and successful study campaign as well.
Fred
How to Pass Auditing (when you’ve never done an audit…)
Auditing scared me to death.
Ive never done an audit in my life, nor did I know the slightest thing about auditing prior to passing that section of the CPA Exam.
However, I scored a 69 on my first try without really studying.
My NTS was running out and I had to take it or lose it, so I took Auditing the same day as another exam I had studied for (I ended up failing that one too).
The fact that I scored a 69 the first time still baffles me to this day, because I didnt deserve a score that high.
I passed Auditing on my second try with a 79 through memorization. I memorized everything that I could the steps to an audit, management assertions, etc.
The questions on Auditing can be very subjective and you find yourself staring at two answers that both seem correct. You have to choose the most correct answer.
I derived my answers by frantically writing down all of my mnemonics on my scratch paper prior to beginning my exam. With that said, keep in mind that if you take too long, your exam session will lock, so you must do this quickly i.e. within 3-4 minutes and then get started.
During the exam, I referred back to my mnemonics constantly and answered the questions accordingly.
There are also a number of topics such as internal control that you can only learn by doing countless multiple choice questions.
If you work enough questions, eventually you will build a base of knowledge about auditing on subjects like internal control where mnemonics dont really work that well, and you will be able to successfully answer the questions on the exam.
