I passed on my first try, but I'll just put here what I did to pass, hopefully it will be somewhat useful to you. I started actually studying for the FAR exam a month before I took it. About 2-3 hours for 5 days the first week, then 4-5 hours for 5 days the second week, then 6-8 hours for 5 days the third week, and then 8 hours for about 6 days of the last week. These hours are usually with minimum distractions (either at a library, home, or when I'm in class, but completely zoning out the professor).
The first week, I read and took notes for Statement of Cash Flows in the Conceptual Framework and Financial Reporting section and the whole Select Financial Statement Accounts section. For the Select Transaction, I skimmed and took notes on Revenue Recognition, Employee/Retiree Benefit Plans, Income Taxes, and Leases. Personally, I completely just skipped everything that I learned in Financial 3 (Business Combinations, Consolidations, Foreign Currency Denominated Transactions). I found that the Business Combinations and Foreign Currency were barely tested in the CPA exam. If they were, they were just very basic and were nothing compared to what I had to know in my undergraduate accounting courses. That is why I essentially just skipped those chapters when I was studying. I also just spent about 1-2 hours just trying to learn the most important IFRS differences.
Then, in the next three weeks, all I did was do multiple choice questions and try to understand questions that you do get wrong. I spent about 2-3 hours on SIMs because I found the practice SIMs to be a little bit too easy and that the actual exam was definitely not going to be that easy (turned out to be true). Therefore, I didn't want to waste my time with the practice SIMs and focused more on doing well in the MCQ.
In those three weeks, I allocated about three days to just NFP and Government. I made sure that I knew everything about NFP (only 30 pages in the wiley textbook) and made sure I gotten every NFP question in NinjaMCQ correct. Governmental accounting was a lot more detailed in the wiley textbook, so I only ended up understanding the very basics of it, which I found was more than enough for the actual CPA exam. Try to do most of the questions that are in NinjaMCQ for government if you want. Just mastering NFP and knowing the basics of government should give you free 20% on the exam.
My recommendation (things that I would do if I were to retake the FAR exam) is know the journal entries for bonds, leases, inventory, and PP&E. When I mean know the journal entries, I don't mean just memorizing what to debit/credit. Try your best to understand why this account is debited and why this account is credited. Also, know how to calculate the values for debits/credits I feel that if you know how to do the journal entries, you should be able to answer all of the MCQ related to these topics and be able to do most of the SIMs related to this topic. Know how to convert accrual to cash basis really well, and do a lot of practice for them. Also, have a good understanding of EPS and diluted EPS. And have a good understanding of everything in shareholder's equity. Know the equity method for significant influence. You should be spending a lot of time on everything here. For the other topics (IFRS, business combinations, foreign currency, FASB), I would just have a basic understanding and you should be fine.
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