Tyler is a weekly blogger as he documents his journey through the CPA Exam. He is currently a graduate student at the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University.

Hello everyone! Before I delve into the strenuous journey that has been my life while studying for the CPA exam, I’d like to give you a brief background of myself. In May of this year I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BS in Business Administration (concentration in Accounting) and a minor in Spanish from Colorado State University.

While at CSU, I interned with one of the big 4 accounting firms and accepted a full-time position within the audit practice, but my start date is not until the fall of 2011, giving me the next year to earn my Masters degree in Accounting. For various reasons, I decided to pursue my graduate education with a little change of scenery.

So, I moved halfway across the country to join the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University, and I am extremely excited to see what the next year has in store. Joining the Fisher MAcc program is actually the primary reason that I ended up as a guest blogger for Another71.com.

I am a student blogger for the MAcc program, and with the CPA exam being such a large chunk of my recent life, I chose to write my first blog on the topic of the CPA exam. As luck would have it, Jeff stumbled across my posting, and bam! Here I am!

Now as a current Master of Accounting student, Jeff asked me to bring my student perspective of the whole CPA examination process to this website, so that is what I’ll be aiming for over the next few weeks. In regards to the CPA exam, I am overwhelmingly proud to report that I have taken both AUD and FAR so far, and as of a few days ago, have successfully passed both!

Studying for those two wonderful sections was a great time of my life that I will be sharing with you in the near future, but I thought for this first post, I should blog about my current situation with my next target of the CPA exam – BEC. I am actually taking this test in about 104 hours from the time I first started writing this, or in other words, Saturday.

I started studying for BEC about 2-3 weeks ago, making it a little less than a month in total of studying time for this section, and I will admit, it has been an extremely unproductive month, to say the least. After taking AUD and FAR, I definitely convinced myself that, comparatively, BEC would be a cakewalk, and unfortunately, my study habits have mirrored this train of thought.

To be fair, I have also had a lot on my plate between moving across the country by myself and starting a Masters program, not to mention, there is that voice in the back of my head that keeps saying, “there are NO simulations on BEC.” (Quick note on that for those of you that don’t know: as of right now, BEC is ONLY multiple choice, but as soon as the 2011 changes come along, this will no longer be the case – my advice is to squeeze this one in before it changes, if at all possible!)

I am using the Bisk study program, and they break down the material into about 7 weeks’ worth of studying. Just to give you an idea of how my timing has been compared to those expectations, I have had to cram the materials for weeks 2-7 into the past week and a half.

So yes, about 5 entire weeks worth of study materials jammed into 10 days. On the one hand, I do not recommend such a study plan for anyone that wants to have the best chance possible of passing the exam on their first try, but on the other hand, if you’re crunched for time, cramming is WAY better than nothing… I also can’t help but feel that if last-minute cramming worked for my past sections, why not for BEC?

I’ll gladly admit that I have one of those brains that can squeeze in a ton of information right before a huge test, retain it for just long enough to spit out the answers, then clear up room for new useful knowledge (like the topics covered on REG). That’s another tidbit of advice: do whatever works for you! Yes, my study program advises that I study for 7 weeks straight, but considering my situation has not provided such ample study time, I have made sure to study in the ways that work best for me in the little time that I have here and there.

Speaking of little time for studying, I better get back to it! I hope this post helps all you fellow students out there not feel bad for trying to cram in your studying in whatever free time you can find. In fact, I think that’s the general theme of the CPA exam – we all have lives that don’t stop just because of this test, so we have no choice but to study a little here, a little there, live our lives in between, and then hold our breath and cross our fingers for those scores. For all of you that are scheduled to sit right at the beginning of October, I’ll be right there with you, and I’ll let you know how it went next week!

Until then,
Tyler