[Anonymous]

Hey peeps, It’s been a couple months since I was last on here – intentionally. I felt I was spending far too much time on here and it was cutting into my study time. Those of us who work full time and prepare for these exams usually have less time on our hands than students and unemployeds. I also found myself getting a good share of less-than-advisable advice (“Don’t move off FAR until you pass it, stop studying for AUD and go back and conquer FAR”, stuff like that) and got sick of it. I don’t anticipate posting much for awhile, not until I’m farther along in this journey.

I took AUD this past week. I’ll admit, I feel like an idiot for worrying so much about the new exam format. I never took AUD on the old format so I had nothing to compare it to. But, the general feeling of the test itself felt very similar to FAR, minus the calculations. There was a lot that was not tested on that I put a good amount of time studying, but I’ll obey by the AICPA’s rules and not comment further on that. But, the new format, whatever it was, just didn’t feel anything different than what I did in my review course (Roger). I was expecting that the whole thing was gonna be a bunch of brain-teasing analytical questions but it was not that way.

One very odd thing happened on the exam though, that I thought I would mention though… The research question was an easy one but the formatting was not. I entered an answer, and thought it was right. I had some minutes left on the clock so went back to it (it was on my last testlet) and something in my brain said “You got it completely wrong.” I worked on it some more, and fixed it. I initially arrived at what I thought was the right answer under the completely WRONG material though. Very strange! I didn’t have that problem on FAR, I got it right away with not much effort.

Now – having said all of this – I will be surprised if I passed. Reason, I burned out due to a new job and didn’t study much for the past month. Shame on me. But, if I’m under 75, I know what to do and what to expect.

I do have a question though…maybe it has an answer, maybe not. And here it is – if you totally bomb the first testlet, can you pass the exam? On the old format, if you got an easy testlet, and didn’t ace it, you could count on a fail unless you knocked the SIMs out of the park. And, you got the easy one because you bombed a medium or a hard one. My second AUD testlet was easier than the first. Are the SIM testlets dependent upon how you did on the MCQ, I wonder? I’m sure quite a few people are wondering about that.

So now, I’ve taken two of the four, and have two green “I PARTICIPATED IN THE CPA EXAM TODAY!” ribbons. So to speak. I’m moving on to BEC tomorrow, if for no other reason than the scores aren’t due out until August 18th for this Q2 window. I have Roger, but not using it for BEC….much. I’m using Gleim’s text and Roger’s MCQ. I might skip Roger’s videos. I don’t know if I ever got much out of his videos other than his motivational lectures…he keeps you energized, but content-wise, I just don’t know if I learned anything and there’s no way to tell. I got more out of his MCQs and SIMs. He’s not known to be good for BEC though, and I don’t want to risk it. I was going to do BEC before AUD but after reading Chapter 1 and watching the videos, which kinda scared me off, I decided to do AUD instead.

I’m planning to re-take FAR after doing BEC, but before going on to REG, for the reason that I don’t want the FAR stuff to get completely away from me. Sadly, the area that I did well on last time on FAR (Govt/NPO) is not gonna be tested much anymore I hear. Boo hoo! lol

The journey continues…

[Anonymous]

Funny you say that about Roger I feel the opposite. I think his questions and TBS, for the most part, are too easy. I thought I was a rockstar on my REG prep with Roger till I found Ninja MCQ and thought “What the heck it can't hurt”. I loaded up Ninja and was like whoa I am in trouble. I took everyone's advice and did thousands and I've had pretty good success. That being said, for BEC Roger's Econ was garbage, you could tell it wasn't his strong suit. The IT section was pretty bad too. But I felt the others were pretty good.

I'm currently studying for AUD right now which is why I hopped in here. Did you feel the exam questions were on the same level as the Roger ones? I'm finding many of them pretty easy but then again I am not 100% through the course. This is my last exam so a lot of the material has carried over from the others. Any tips would be great. A tip for you on BEC: Definitely learn the generic format for the WCs (can't help ya on TBS that wasn't around in March). I scored stronger on my WC and no joke ran out of time so I just spammed a bunch of key terms on my last 2 and repeated the question. I was shocked. If someone read it they would say “wtf is this”. I knew what to say but had no time to say it so I got lucky.

[Anonymous]

I found that Roger's materials were good enough to prepare for FAR and AUD. The MCQ questions I got on FAR were pretty much the same as Roger's, but the SIMs were ridiculously formatted and I am sure I bombed most of them. I started into his BEC course and found it terrible and then read a lot of negative reviews about it. That's why I'm using Gleim for most of my reviewing – gotta see what Roger has in the way of practice SIMs for BEC…as I have almost no knowledge of stuff covered in BEC, this is gonna be a roller coaster for me.
I took FAR in January and was going to do BEC next but after a week of the Roger BEC course, I shifted to AUD. The exam questions were
harder than the Roger questions for MCQ but the SIMs were easier. I think eventually I will be buying Ninja MCQs because I found the same problem on AUD and FAR, and that was, I just
found myself guessing on most of them. I've always stunk at MCQ and if I am ever going to conquer these exams I am going to have to work more than the 1,500 or so that Roger offers per section.
I'll have to figure all of this out later because right now, I have just 2 months (while working full time) to study for and hopefully pass BEC before my NTS expires.

Some people get lucky on these exams, and some don't. I have had to totally stop comparing myself to anyone (or beating myself up) because everyone just seems to have drastically different experiences with these exams.

[Author]

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