BEC in a Week; Wiley CPA Review Test Bank and NINJAs for final review

J.W. is a weekly Club 75 Blogger as he documents his journey through the CPA Exam.

He has been a member of Another71.com's Club 75 since August 2010.

Week 15:

I have one week until my BEC exam. I finished up the last chapter a few days ago and now I’m in full final review mode. I still have some weak spots where I know I will need to spend a fair amount of time reviewing financial ratios and cost accounting. However I’m feeling pretty good about where I am right now.

I did a practice exam last night and scored an 83%. I was shocked. I thought I knew the material pretty well, but I didn’t think I knew it that well. Before taking the practice exam I was actually pretty worried, but now I’m feeling very confident despite my weak spots.

For comparison’s sake I never scored above a 70% when taking a FAR practice exam and I failed that exam with a 69. I think I can attribute my turn-around to a major overhaul of how I studied. For FAR I watched the videos, did the minimum MCQs and moved on without perhaps fully understanding the topic thinking I’d get back to it at final review. I didn’t go back and read the text.

This time around, I read the first 2 chapters of Wiley and didn’t watch any videos. I also took advantage of a feature in the Wiley Test Bank CD here. I would print out all of the questions with the correct answers and the text link explaining, and I’d go through every single question and read the text link to really hammer it in. It really helped for the first 2 chapters.

Then I switched back to how I studied for FAR. I watched the next 2 modules of videos and when I was done I realized something. I wasn’t really learning all that much after I watched the videos and that the material was really sinking in because I’d do MCQ’s and have no idea what I should do.

I began questioning myself and if I had the right materials, should I switch courses? All these negative thoughts went through my head. Then I went back to how I reviewed the first two chapters when I reviewed each question with its text link from Wiley that is really when the topic started to sink in. It’s something where just seeing the same thing over and over, even if you move on not understanding it, but after seeing it for the 3rd or 4th time it really started to click. My confidence rose a little bit, but those negative thoughts were still there. I even thought that if I didn’t pass the upcoming exam, that that would be it, I just wouldn’t be a CPA because I just didn’t know the material.

The remaining 4 chapters I still watched the videos, then did the Wiley questions after, while supplementing it with Jeff’s NINJA notes and the Wiley CPA BEC App. I’m not sure if going forward watching the videos will be the best use of my study time. I felt I really only got 10% of the knowledge I needed from the videos. They really do give important tidbits that will make a subject easier to understand, but I really felt I got 80% of what I needed to know from the Wiley Text with the other 10% coming from the notes and Wiley App as sometimes just seeing something in Jeff’s notes or the app will just put it in a better perspective. I really learned something about myself these past few weeks in that the best way that I learn is just reading it over and over again.

That’s why these next 7 days it’s gonna be me and my Wiley Text Book and Test Bank and some Apps and Notes here and there when I’m not home. Hopefully I’ll continue to improve and my confidence will stay high. I don’t want to look too far ahead, but I think I may have stumbled upon the study strategy that I need to pass this exam. I’ll worry about it later on, but I think just flat out reading the textbook may be the way I learn best. Enough about my Audit, FAR and Reg future though. I have BEC to pass first. I guess the moral of what I’m trying to say here is that if something isn’t working for you, don’t be afraid to change it up.

Sometimes you might even need less than what you have and just focusing on less, instead of more.

-J.W.