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I just sat for the FAR section of the CPA exam on 11/28/14 and passed on my first try with an 85.
For what it’s worth, I thought I would give a lengthy description of my experience and suggestions for study to help others assess what would be best for their own plan of study. Everyone is different, but this is the kind of detailed description of study habits by people who passed that I was looking for before taking the exam. Maybe it will help someone out there.
MY SITUATION:
Male, 31, married, wife and I both work full-time jobs, finished my accounting degree AND wife just had our first son a month before I began studying for CPA exam.
MATERIALS USED:
Becker CPA Review course with Becker flashcards. No supplementary materials used.
DURATION OF STUDY:
September 3, 2014 until test date on November 28, 2014.
MY ROUTINE:
I stayed on a rigid schedule of finishing one chapter of the FAR materials per week no matter what. Studied four weeknights every week for 2-3 hours, then finished out the chapter on Saturday. I did not plan out which weeknight I took off each week, but let it happen serendipitously—whether due to some unforeseen event, or I waited until a night I really wasn’t in the mood to study.
If I finished up the chapter I was working on before the weekend, rather than try to get ahead on my studies, I would reward myself with a weekend off. There were about 2-3 weeks that I worked all five weeknights so that I could give myself the weekend off from studying. I believe this kept me balanced and prevented my getting burned out.MY PHILOSOPHY:
Initially approach the material with a bird’s eye view for the big picture of what’s going on and KEEP THE BIG PICTURE IN FOCUS. If I found myself getting lost in the details, I would stop and mentally zoom out, trying to see how everything tied together. This made it easier for me to infer a lot of details when rote memorization didn’t cut it.
My thinking is that this is like dating: you don’t to get to know a person on the first date no matter how much you learn about them in one sitting. It’s only by seeing them multiple times that you really get to know them. Same with this material. My goal wasn’t to master the material after hearing it once, but to introduce myself to it multiple times over a long period, starting at a very general level and then going a little more in depth each time I saw it.
Half the battle for this exam is also psychological. I was intentional about NOT dwelling on (a.) the quantity of material or (b.) my capacity to absorb it. I didn’t try to tell myself I could do it or pump myself up, but tried to ignore any and all voices in my head and focus solely on the task at hand. I had a plan, focused on what needed to be done each day, and trusted the system.
MY SCHEDULE:
Each week, I watched one lecture all the way through from beginning to end. I kept my mind loose, again, paying attention to the big picture. Many times my mind would drift from boredom and I would even play my guitar, keeping a general sense of what was going on and then paying close attention to when Tim and Pete said emphasized something or there was a difficult process that needed explaining.
I DID NOT TAKE ANY NOTES AT ALL DURING THE LECTURE. There are 0 notes in my physical book. The reason is because all of the notes they make on the lecture are in the e-book available on your software, so why bother?
After completing the lecture, I would skim through the chapter in the PHYSICAL book one time because people read faster and retain information better reading from a physical book. Still keeping the big picture at the forefront of my mind, I went through the book glancing over details a little more than in the lecture.
Then I pulled up the e-book and browsed through Tim and Pete’s notes to make sure I covered what they considered the important areas, memorized mnemonics, etc.
(Study tip: it’s easier to read the e-book online rather than in the software saved on your hard drive. Online, you can scroll the book and resize. Seems like a small thing, but when jumping around the book it was SO MUCH EASIER to have the online e-book open in a window while I studied.)
After looking at the notes, I did 100% of the multiple choice questions—even the optional ones. I didn’t focus at all on my scores and frequently scored in the 50s and 60s with each multiple choice section. My goal was not to get a good score or memorize every single thing I came across, but to THOROUGHLY understand the answer to each question IN THAT MOMENT both when I got them right and when I got them wrong. I took time to absorb the process, calculate how they came up with the answer, went back to the e-book to get clarification at times.
(Another study tip: when you click on the e-book in the software while doing the multiple choice, it will automatically take you to the relevant page for that particular question.)
Flashcards I did in my spare time, maybe an hour a week at first, but pretty much dropped them by chapter 7 and I don’t think it harmed me. They were helpful for keeping the big picture in focus, but I wouldn’t spend a lot of time with them.
I did NOT do simulations at this point. More to come on this later.
PRE-FINAL REVIEW:
Having completed all the lectures and multiple choice, I then proceeded to go through the ENTIRE e-book again. By this point, I had essentially gone through the book three times (during the lecture, perusing the physical book, looking over electronic notes from Tim and Pete). Now I ran through the e-book again, this time going very in depth. I’ve got the big picture, now I’m working out the nitty gritty details.
Once I completed this pass-through with the book, I did randomized multiple choice from all ten sections. I did testlets in increments of 30 questions so that I began the process of habituating myself to the way it would work on the actual exam.
I assessed the most critical chapter I was struggling with and did 20 multiple choice questions from that chapter alone, taking time to glance through the book again and understanding the answers to the questions. Once I was consistently scoring a 70 or higher, I jumped back to the full range of topics in increments of 30. Repeated this process with each area I struggled with.
Once I was hitting 70-75 consistently on my 30-question testlets, THEN I started on the simulations from all ten chapters.Let’s talk about sims for a second. I started off trying to complete sims alongside the multiple choice with each chapter. But I quickly determined that this was fruitless. For one thing, the sims require a comprehensive understanding of the material, which I didn’t have on my initial run-through. I would get lots of answers wrong, then spend an exorbitant amount of time trying to decipher these lengthy answers/small novels in the solutions.
I concluded it was better to hit the sims closer to the end of my studies when I had mastered a lot of the material. I would say knock out all the sims back-to-back. It really does pull together these complex concepts. However, I think it’s better to wait until you’re at a point where you can efficiently complete the simulations and quickly determine where you went wrong by glancing glancing over the solution rather than staring into the explanation abyss as a newbie.
FINAL REVIEW:
Now it was down to the last week-and-half or so before the test. I was eating up those randomized multiple choice questions like M&M’s—still in increments of 30 so that I was building endurance and setting a pace for the real deal. I also made a cheat sheet/summary on especially tricky things from each chapter in an excel spreadsheet.
At some point, I quickly browsed through the entire e-book one last time, really just to run through the material and make sure I was remembering it—making sure I had the details nailed down, especially on the complex things. Do I get how they’re calculating contract profit? Do I multiply or divide by this PV rate for capital leases to get the answer they want? Where does budgetary control go in government accounting? What makes revenue restricted or unrestricted for not-for-profits? All that little stuff you want to glaze over, but shouldn’t.
TROUBLE AREAS:
Without a doubt, these were the sections that gave me the most trouble (ranked most to least difficult): Chapter 9 (GOV and NFP Orgs), Chapter 8 (GOV Accounting), Chapter 6 (Pensions and Income Tax Accounting), and Chapter 5 (Leases, Liabilities and Bonds). I’ve heard a lot of people struggle with chapter 7 (S/E, Cash Flows, Ratios), but this wasn’t so bad for me.
HIGHLIGHTED ITEMS:
Journal Entries. Know these. Pay attention to the names of accounts, whether they have credit or debit balances, how they relate to other accounts, what other accounts they’re tied to: the whole shebang. I wouldn’t focus too much on this until you’ve gone through the whole book once, but take the time to do these. Sims really help out here. Don’t skimp out.
IFRS. There is a great summary at the end of chapter 10. Don’t kill yourself to memorize the whole thing, but definitely look it over a few times and make sure you’re familiar the differences between GAAP and IFRS along the way in your studies.
Disclosures. A couple of times, Tim Gearty mentions a basic guideline for disclosures on the CPA exam: (a.) the more disclosures, the better, (b.) don’t repeat redundant information in disclosures, (c.) don’t disclose good news, only the bad. It’s not a magic bullet, but I pretty much ignored memorizing disclosures all throughout the course and just assessed what made the most sense whenever a question came up in light of those principles. Seems to have worked, but don’t take that as Gospel.
DAY BEFORE THE EXAM:
Took the day off. At this point, I had been eating and sleeping this stuff and either I knew it or I didn’t. One more day of studying was not going to help. I relaxed, hung out with my family (this day happened to be Thanksgiving),I ate some great food and didn’t think about the exam all day.
I went to bed early, slept downstairs on our comfy couch so I wouldn’t be woken up from our baby crying in the middle of the night. Slept like a log.
MY EXPERIENCE TAKING THE EXAM:
I scheduled my exam for 12:30 cause I thought that was my peak time. I woke up at 8:00, took my time getting ready, meandered out the door and got some nice breakfast. I brought my own lunch with plenty of food so I wouldn’t have to leave the testing premises. I went into the prometrics center and registered 2 hours early. I went back to my car and was calm, not nervous. I played some music, relaxed, casually ran through the physical book again and the cheat sheet to keep everything fresh. I ate chicken and some fruit; things your body can run on for hours that will keep up your energy since couldn’t bring food into the center.
At 12:30, I sat for the test. Surprisingly, the questions were much easier than I anticipated. Almost nothing out of left field. But I think that’s cause I studied like crazy and didn’t skimp out on things I had a hard time understanding. I felt calm, collected, didn’t freak out.
I had already habituated myself to finishing testlets in multiples of 30 so it all felt very familiar. I guessed on a few questions, but made sure not to think about the ones I wasn’t sure of. My mental state was to focus on each question individually like it was in a vacuum, forgetting everything else. I kept track of time, but kept it a little loose. I zoned out on a wall a few times to let my mind rest.
I could take breaks in between the testlets if I wanted. I only took one bathroom break right before hitting the sims, which you should give yourself AT LEAST one hour to do. Maybe more.
I’ve read several places that one of the 7 simulations is completely bogus and not even graded. I definitely had one where I was like, “Yeah, definitely never seen this before.” I just filled out 0s and “no entry” and whatever and moved on without a second thought.Tips for research questions if you get them: use the “advanced search” function to look up questions, not the basic search. Play around with advanced search on Becker simulations and you’ll find ways to narrow down answers quickly.
Again, with the sims, for me there was nothing I hadn’t seen before. I think I got a few small details wrong, but most of them were substantially right.
I completed all my sims and reviewed everything until my time ran out. I never hit “submit” and everything was loaded in fine, in case anyone is wondering about that.
I left the center feeling good—not great, but good. Didn’t stress over it, took 4 days off from homework, then went right into studying for AUD. Found out I got an 85 on December 9th.Hope that helps!
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