[anish.lamsal2017]

Yes those variances formulas are important. If you are strong on those you should be fine. Make sure you review the COSO chapter (I believe its chapter 1 on Becker) before you sit. I had a bunch of questions on it. IT is important too. For IT section, i skimmed over the course outline in Becker the day before the exam as part of my final review.

AUD - 93
BEC - 82
FAR - 80
REG - 83

"Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. - Ford" - AL

[anish.lamsal2017]

Dont lose hope. You got this. I passed Audit on my 3rd try so I feel your pain. Everyone has thier own study method but once I failed Aud for the 2nd time, I had to rethink my studying strategy and make changes. Previously, I used to jump straight to mcqs and tried to learn from the answer explanations. However, I figured after 2 or 3 attempts of the same questions, I was just memorizing the answers and not understanding the concept. Remember, the CPA exam tests you mostly on high level concepts rather than being really detailed so I figured if I understood the basic concept I would not have problem answering the questions. So for my 3rd crack at Aud, I read the book and watched the lecture first before jumping into mcqs. I had Becker so I would first watch the lecture for each page of the book, read the page immediately after watching the lecture and made notes in the book itself. If I didnt understand something from Becker, I would go to youtube and look up videos explaining the topic. Thankfully there are some free lectures from Roger as well as other review courses on Youtube that will help you out. After every subsection of a chapter, I would knock out the mcqs. Now, for those questions I got wrong during Becker homework, I would not redo them immediately but instead I mark them. My logic behind doing this was if I redid those questions immediately, I would just be remembering the answers. So instead, I would first finish the entire chapter and then do a progress test of 100 questions for the chapter and 95% of the time, those marked questions would be picked up during the progress test. I followed this same strategy for all other sections going forward and was able to thankfully pass.
Don't lose hope you will get there soon enough. Good luck!!

AUD - 93
BEC - 82
FAR - 80
REG - 83

"Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. - Ford" - AL

[anish.lamsal2017]

Elkguy do not be discouraged. I had already passed 3 sections 2.5 years and all of those expired and had to start from scratch and am finally done. I used Becker and watched each page of the lecture and immediately read that particular page from the book and made sure I understood the concept in and out. If I did not understand something, I would go to Youtube and look for videos related to the topic. There is this guy on Youtube ( forgot his name) but he has free lectures on Intermediate accounting which is defnitely applicable to FAR which actually helped me understand most of the concepts that becker was doing a lousy job with. Also, just my suggestion, I would not jump straight to mcqs because although you will understand the reason for why you got a particualr question wrong, after 2 3 attempts of the same question, you would memorize the answer which I think is sort of counterproductive. So my suggestion is hammer the concept by reading the book and lecture, memorize the entries(if needed) and then jump to the MCQs. In terms of SIMs, I did not any SIMS practice at all since they are roll of a dice in the exam. Also, make sure you focus on Non monetary transactions. You will most likely get at least 1 or 2 MCQ or a SIM on it. Good luck!!

AUD - 93
BEC - 82
FAR - 80
REG - 83

"Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. - Ford" - AL

[anish.lamsal2017]

Hello everyone,

Finally, I am able to say that I have conquered the CPA exams. Just got the score for FAR and passed with an 80!!!!! Coming out of the test, I had a terrible feeling that there was no way in hell I would have passed the FAR exam. I took 2:15 minutes to finish the MCQs and had 1:45 left to finish the SIMS. My mcqs were a lot of NFP questions and at least 4 bond questions and a bunch of what I felt like were Gov questions. So suggestion to everyone, do not overlook the govt and specially the NFP accounting portion. IMO Becker did an average job with the NFP so I supplemented my study with Ninja to cover items that Becker did not do a very good job with. In terms of SIMS, do not overlook the Contingency sections and subsequent events section. I focused a lot on the harder topics for the SIMS ( SOCF, Equity, Leases) and did not have any SIMS on those. However, i swear I had 2 SIMS on Contingencies and 1 on subsequent event. Good luck everyone!!!

AUD - 93
BEC - 82
FAR - 80
REG - 83

"Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. - Ford" - AL

[anish.lamsal2017]

Passed BEC with an 82. 3 down, 1 to go. Thanks Ninja and Becker. I used Becker for the book and the MCQs from Ninja (which I feel are harder than Becker). Coming out of the BEC exam, I felt miserable as I was not able to completely finish the exam. I only had 2 minutes left to write a quick letter so all I ended up doing on that one was define th ae topic in the question according to how the study material defined it (I used the exact key words that Mr. CPA Man Olinto and had us highlight/underline in the text and threw in those words).

My suggestion to BEC exam takers is make sure in the written portion there arent any spelling & grammatical errors and make sure you use proper format when writing letters/memos. Since it is not graded manually but instead by a computer, those grammatical/spelling errors will be costly. Good luck everyone

AUD - 93
BEC - 82
FAR - 80
REG - 83

"Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. - Ford" - AL

[anish.lamsal2017]

Hi guys, my suggestion for Reg sims is dont bother spending too much time and getting hung up for being totally lost on them. If you have Becker, do those 3 practice exams like its a real exam and those 20 – 21 sims altogether should be plenty. Also, if you have time look at the newly released AICPA questions (includes both mcqs and sims). What I do recommend and what I did while prepping was making sure I knew the layout of the authoritative literature and the topics. The layout is sort of similar to how the becker chapters are set up. One of the sort of guaranteed questions on the reg exam is they will provide a letter to or from the client and you would have to change the wording and tax advice that you provide on that letter. besides getting the research questions right, if you know the layout of the auth literature inside and out you can pinpoint exactly where to look for your answer. You might not get all the answers but there are couple of easy points that you can get in those questions even though you dont know the calculation involved or even the concepts. That saved me in my exam, knowing the layout of the literature. Its futile to search for keywords or even use advanced search in the literature. Just my two cents.

AUD - 93
BEC - 82
FAR - 80
REG - 83

"Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. - Ford" - AL

[anish.lamsal2017]

@SIDIEULEVEUT I hear you. Gearty might work for some but my honest opinion on him is he just makes you highlight everything which I feel is useless because I do that regardless when I read the book on my own time. In regards to free material, there is a guy on Youtube I forgot his name he has good content on REG at least. However, he has a little bit of an accent so might be difficult to understand sometimes and there wasnt any subtitle option either. But he was great for me because he had some great lectures on topics that Becker barely touched on. Ill post once I find his name.

AUD - 93
BEC - 82
FAR - 80
REG - 83

"Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. - Ford" - AL

[anish.lamsal2017]

Passed with an 82 in my second try. Thanks Ninja. I used Becker and Ninja both. Becker questions are easier compared to Ninja. I read through the books first, finished homeworks for the chapters first and once done with the chapter I did 100 questions for the chapter. In Becker i was scoring ~80 – 85%. I would follow the same methodology in Ninja i.e. 100 questions per sitting and I would score significantly less. Ninja is a very good guys I sort of regret getting Becker at all. Ex: Becker has very little info on estate and trust taxation and the mcqs are weak but Ninja's questions on that section covers it in much detail.

AUD - 93
BEC - 82
FAR - 80
REG - 83

"Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. - Ford" - AL

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