[stuckintheslowlane]

Hi everyone,
I’m considering switching studying for FAR to AUD. I’ve been studying FAR inconsistently for about a month. Tax season was unbelievably busy this year (60 hour weeks since January) and I’ve only studied 15 hours. I’m planning on taking FAR on June 5th which is about 6 weeks away. I most likely won’t be able to study more than 20 hours a week because my small firm is currently down a staff accountant and the partners haven’t started looking for a replacement.

My goal is to take one section this quarter. I think it might be more reasonable to take AUD considering the amount of material in FAR.

Have you ever switched from one of the larger sections to one of the “smaller” sections? How did it work out for you? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time!

[Anonymous]

If you've only done 15 hours of studying, you aren't far enough into it to turn back and do another section instead. But, having said that….

FAR is absolutely the best one to start with. You will probably find FAR questions on AUD and BEC, like I did. The AICPA has their own interesting way of working FAR into the other three exams (not REG so much though, but I've read about people who had the occasional FAR question pop in on REG.) FAR is the basis for all the rest of them, even though theyr'e completely different exams…mostly. FAR also has the most information, and is arguably the hardest of the four in terms of volume of info and difficulty of topics. I think 7 out of 10 people will tell you that FAR is the wisest choice for first.

I labored on FAR for 5 months before taking it. That was way too long but I was working a lot too. Foolishly, I moved on to AUD instead of going back and fixing my weaknesses on FAR…I knew what they were, but I was so sick of studying the stuff, and because AUD is easier, I just thought I'd be better off coming back to FAR after doing the rest of them. Although…I didn't pass AUD or BEC. Obviously, I am no role model. Switching to a new section is not something that many people do though. Once you start on one, it's good to just finish it up. I've known of people who took FAR several times in a year before they passed it and then went on to the rest of them.

[DoubleBogey]

I agree with @crazyleon. At the analysis/sim level there's a decent chunk of FAR knowledge that goes into auditing that stuff. So if you don't take FAR first, you run a larger risk of getting sucked into living in the Authoritative literature for the entire exam.

AUD - 92
BEC - 89
FAR - 79
REG - 84

"I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us." Philippians 3:14

[Author]

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