CPA Exam is Hard (Breaking News) | Another71 Podcast #2

The CPA Exam is Hard (Breaking News)| Another71 Podcast #2

“N” in NINJA further explained…

After the CPA Exam…CMA? MBA?…

What states should international candidates register with?…

Hurricane Irene affecting score release?…

When can scores be expected?…

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The following is general information only. Your situation is fact-dependent, and the advice on this show may not necessarily apply to your unique situation. This is also not accounting or legal advice.

Friday, September 9th, 2011 happy Friday to you. This is CPA reviewed the CPA exam podcast from another 70 one.com my name is Jeff Elliott and I am your humble host. Now there's some new ones that has been around since 2008 and had some pretty. Humble roots starting out on blogger blog spot. And, uh, the, the old school, another 70 one.com logo was this woodgrain creation that I made with Microsoft paint.

And, um. Three years later, three and a half years later, it's gone through four evolutions. And I launched the new theme yesterday. Yeah. So this is another 70 one.com version 4.0 and whenever you go live with a new theme, there are always some things that don't work. I tried to do a promotion today with some discounts offering 40% off Wylie and Ninja study guides and flashcards, and guess what?

The coupon didn't work. So that's a little bit of a fail on my part, but I'm getting it fixed. Everything should be 40% off sitewide. Now. Um, all right. Well on today's show we are going to talk about what we, what do we have here? We're going to talk about score, release information. I had some people write some questions.

One of the coolest aspects of the new theme is in the upper right-hand corner, there's a button called ask Jeff, and it's just a field that you fill out and you can, you can send me. Your question and it comes right to my email. You don't have to go through the trouble of emailing me. You can probably even send me hate mail anonymously and I would never know who you are.

Not that that's ever happened. All right. Alison says, Jeff. Alison on Facebook, when can scores be expected? Alright. I've been doing CPA exam score release predictions since the beginning, and I was the first one doing it because people always wondered when scores are going to come out. So I started tracking when scores were released and I was able on several occasions to nail the dates and the sequence.

For four out of the four sections. Um, usually window one was always my best window too. I was often over four. So that made for a nice average of two for four, which if I was a baseball player hitting 500, I, I'd be a Hall of Famer. Right. Um, so here's the deal. Uh, the score release process since another 70 one.com started doing the score, release predictions and, and started getting attention.

The powers that be really tried to clamp down on the information that was leaked. So pretty much all of the information is on lockdown and. They have taken to social media to give vague announcements like scores are coming out soon. Um, so pretty much they didn't like this blogger guy being their voice.

So they've taken that over and. So what's going on with score releases now is in theory, supposedly this is supposed to be the last testing window that they released scores like this, AKA in the third month of the quarter, all at once. There used to be window one, window two, Oh, excuse me, wave one and wave two and now it's just wave two.

Supposedly they are going to be releasing scores a lot sooner now that they have a, a good sample size of exams starting in January when they switched over to the new exam format, did a little switcheroo. So, um, all of that to say it's impossible to predict what the AI CPA is going to do because they do something different.

Every single time. So if you go to another 70 one.com and click on score release info, you will see the predictions. But the predictions are basically nothing more than what the AI CPA did. Last testing window. So I have another 71 that comes rarely correct. Score release predictions for a September 19th I have financial and BEC coming out September 20th.

Auditing and September 21st regulation. Of course, none of those will be correct, but you can always hang out on the CPA exam forum at another, somebody, why not come? And as soon as something is released, you will likely, if you don't hear it from me, you will hear it about the millisecond that NASBA tweets that scores have been released.

Cause people will report it so. All that to say, I don't have any clue when scores are coming out. Um, Kevin on Facebook had a really good question. He said, Jeff, I'm hearing that there might be a delay in score releases due to hurricane Irene. So I sent an email to. Someone and I said, Hey, can you, is this fact or fiction?

They came back and they said, it's fiction. The only people that will be the only people that will be impacted by hurricane Irene is, are, are people who had to have their exams, um, rescheduled into September because of hurricane Irene. Sabotage their exam day. So, so there you have it. The majority of the candidates will not, will not have their score release impacted due to Hurricane Irene, and that there's really no secret.

It was a, it was a friend of mine who is a director at NASBA. All right. Um. Jaeger DS, I, I totally botched that name, but Jeff, and this was from the ask Jeff button@anotherseventyone.com I am a chartered accountant, an ACA from India. I would like to apply for the CPA exam and I want to choose Dubai as a testing center.

Would you please suggest which date I should select? Um, I don't know how the fact that you're testing in Dubai affects anything because the international exam is kind of a new thing, but let's say, okay. When people used to travel from overseas to come to. The US to go to a testing center in the U S it didn't matter what state you physically took the exam, what mattered was what state you were registered in.

So for instance, I'm in Kansas and if I wanted to bypass the 150-hour rule. You know, in order to sit for the exam in Kansas, I could register as a Colorado applicant. Now that throws all sorts of quirks and kinks into getting licensed. If you ultimately want to. Want to be licensed and hold yourself out as a CPA in the state that you live.

I would go ahead and just register as a candidate in that state. However, like let's say that you work in industry and you just want to pass the CPA exam and just have it on your resume for internal promotion purposes, you're not going to hold yourself out as a CPA. You're not going to keep up with CPE.

You're not going to get licensed. Dan, a state like Colorado might be a really good choice, but again, you really need to do some due diligence and find out how registering as like, say, a Colorado resident will impact your, your goals, your career. So case in point. In the last podcast I mentioned something about 150 hours.

And, uh, this guy, Brian on the blog, he, he wrote some comment about, well, you know, that's not right, you know, Colorado. And I said, I responded, yeah. Um, blah, blah, blah. The majority of States require 150 hours. And he comes back with this long thing and he's like, I'm from Kansas, or he was from Kansas. I'm like, what?

And it turns out as my is my good friend Brian, who, who works in Kansas. He registered as a Colorado applicant and took the exam, passed the exam on his first try. By the way, Brian's one of the smartest dudes I know. Um, he's a CPA, CMA, C I a, and now he's going to get his MBA and he's under 30. So if anyone needs a new, future CFO in their organization out there, you can email me.

Brian's the man. Um, lots of sec reporting experience too. All right, so let's see. Does that, yeah, that covers. That. So I guess, um, the question about being an international candidate in India, I would, if you were going to pick a state with the least stringent testing requirements and you don't care about licensing, I would investigate Colorado.

Uh, NASBA has a. Has a licensing library, I think it's called a L L accounting licensing library. Anyway, go to NAZA nasba.org they have all the information there. I think for a nominal fee, you can get the download on everything that you need to know about testing requirements and licensing. Jeff, I would like to get your thoughts on a CMA or MBA.

Is the CMA worth the trouble if you are a CPA in, which would be a better compliment. Hey, that ties into what I was talking about with my friend Brian, MBA, C M a and CPA. Um, Doug, if you are already a CPA, and if you want to further distinguish yourself. Apart from your peers ban an additional designation is the way to go.

I personally think that if I were going to go that route, I would take the CMA just like you're talking about. And because the CMA carries a lot of weight, especially internationally, um, and also in a manufacturing environment. Definitely. So if, if two people are are vying for the same job, they're both CPAs, both have similar work experience, but one is also a C M.

A I think that's pretty advantageous as far as an MBA, you know, unless you're getting like an Ivy League MBA, like a name brand. MBA, I'm not sure that your average hiring manager is really going to care about that MBA because it's hard to, it's harder to really quantify what that MBA means because I mean, they have no idea.

What you know, because you have an MBA, unless it's like a name brand deal like Harvard or something like that. But with the CMA, they're like, okay, this person knows how to do cost accounting for sure. So I would go for the CMA. It's also a lot less expensive and it carries more weight. So CMA is the way to go in my humble opinion.

Right. All right. Todd says. Jeff, I'm asking about the N in the acronym Ninja. When you say the watch all videos at once, let's say that there are eight chapters to financial. Do I watch all of the chapter one videos first? Then do the notes. Um, I would watch each video and as you're doing the videos, take notes.

And then move to video two and take notes. And then at the very end is when you rewrite your notes. But yeah, you're watching the videos and you're taking notes as you're doing them, and you're trying to plow through the videos as quickly as possible so that then you can move on to the multiple-choice questions.

All right. That covers all of the questions that I have today. I want to keep it short and sweet on this Friday. Again, you can go do another 70 one.com click in the upper right-hand corner. Ask Jeff and I will answer your question on the next podcast. Or you can go to facebook.com/another 71 and you can ask a question there, and I got pretty good feedback from the first podcast.

And this is a work in progress, and hopefully this time around, I didn't say as many ums as you knows. I don't know if you've ever done public speaking or you've ever been trained as a public speaker, but. Uh, it really grates on your ears if you listen to a speaker or even yourself, and you hear, um, um, you know, you know, and I was listening to the last podcast I did and I was like, man, you can almost have a, you can almost make a drinking game with all the ums and you knows.

You'd be drunk within the first five minutes. All right, I'm out of here. Have a great one with everyone. This has been CPA reviewed over 70 one.com have a great week.