[sarah210]

After two failures (one awful one), I am thinking its time to take the plunge, suck it up, and buy Becker, rather than trying to get through this with review books alone. My city only has one in person class per year, and of course it’s at a time when I can’t go.

So I’m trying to decide between online becker and self study becker. Any recommendations? I’m leaning towards online because I like the structure, but I’m sure that you more experienced folk can tell me what you did and didn’t like about the different becker options.

Advice?

Created with Compare Ninja

REG- 53, 91
BEC- 88
FAR- 62, 85
AUD- 85

Ethics- 93

[Anonymous]

I'm actually not that familiar with the Online structure. I can tell you that for me personally, the in class review was awful. They did not provide anything different from what Olinto and Gearty provide on the DVD lectures. Olinto and Gearty are very good and make it actually mildly entertaining.

I did the in class review for only one section and decided going to a class and listening to them tell me what to highlight was pointless.

What is the difference between online and self study? In self study, you can put in your exam date and it will populate a calendar for you to keep you on track.

I have had 0 complaints with Becker thus far with 1 section left to pass.

[Keely]

Go with self-study. I knew from having night classes in college that there was no way I could stay engaged for four straight hours listening to a lecture. I bought the self-study and forced myself to adhere to a strict schedule. I also like to do the MCQs entirely after every lecture section, not wait until I've watched all four hours. In my opinion, unless you absolutely LOVE accounting, there is no chance in hell you'll still be paying attention after the second hour with the in-class! My advice is to plan your studying down to the minute, and stick with it.

BEC: (4/2012) 88
AUD: (5/2012) 91
REG: (8/2012) 82
FAR: (1/2013) 78 🙂

VA CPA #42010

[Keely]

Oh, sorry, I'm an idiot! I obviously didn't read the question! My point still stands, though, about the self-study. It worked for me, because I get to go at my own pace. I just have to be diligent about adhering to the schedule.

BEC: (4/2012) 88
AUD: (5/2012) 91
REG: (8/2012) 82
FAR: (1/2013) 78 🙂

VA CPA #42010

[occams_razor]

@Sarah210, I can tell you that I've only done self-study with Becker so I don't know to the full extent of how different the class experience is. But what I found helpful was to use whatever program matches your study style. For example, I need to write everything down, answer as many questions as I can get my hands on and make stupid connections to movie references in order to fully commit it to memory haha. My point is that it may help to evaluate how you study and pick the program that works best for you. Hope this helps, I'm taking REG again in July too.

AUD - 79!
REG - (67,69-without NINJA and Wiley Test Bank) 84!(with NINJA and Wiley Test Bank)
FAR - 75!
BEC - 83!
Every test I passed, I used Ninja Notes. Couldn't have done it without them!
I am done!!!

[herbert7890]

Self Study 100%. That's why I chose because I felt Live classes were a total waste of time (time of travel plus the lectures themselves.)

FAR 88 - BEC 86 - AUD 90 - REG 85

[One day….]

I took the online classes the first time though and am doing self-study for the parts I didn't pass. I would recommend signing up for the online classes because 1) You will be able to log in online to watch videos and answer questions from anywhere without installing the disks. 2) It will give you more structure to follow Becker's plan and stick to studying. If you plan to follow the Becker study plan, then why not? You will get the same package as the self-study program with the online resources. If the online doesn't work for you, you can call them up to make a one-time schedule change for free. Really the only thing you would have to lose if you didn't finish the online classes is the Becker promise, but unless there are some drastic changes to the exam coming up, it wouldn't be worth it to use the Becker promise anyway. Online classes are the way to go!

One day is today! I'm DOOONNNNNEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

[One day….]

You may be able to extend your 18 month license as well by doing the online classes (I know of course nobody thinks that it will take them that long to pass, but you never know). Since you would have all the same videos and questions online, you wouldn't need to install the software until you were ready to do the simulations and final exams, as those are not available online. You could extent your license by 4-8 weeks. I didn't do this because I didn't think about it. My license is going to expire 2 days before my exam, not a big deal, but would be nice to have it until the end.

One day is today! I'm DOOONNNNNEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

[Author]

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