The exciting news from this week is that I started using the Roger CPA Review online software, and it is great! It is so much better to watch someone teach exactly what I need for the exam rather than have to read through a book.

Also, Adrienne (from Jr. Deputy Accountant) who works over at Roger explained that while the Wiley books I have are good for practice problems, they are useless for explaining the subject matter.

I’m glad she pointed this out, as I was struggling to get much out of their explanations. The Roger review program is much easier to focus on, and I feel more confident that I am covering the topics I need to know for the exam.

I am already logging more study hours now that I am using Roger, but the bad news from this past week is that pre-Roger, I did not study nearly as much as I had planned to. I put in only 4.25 hours in the past week. I’m trying to see this in a positive light, as the time spent trying to get anything out of those Wiley explanations would probably not be a good use of CPA study hours anyway!

Also, Roger suggests a completely approach to using the questions to help study, but I’m not sure if I want to completely abandon using the multiple choice questions as a diagnostic, because they are a good preview of the topics, despite being super frustrating. I’m also almost done with those, so I would feel uncomfortable leaving it unfinished. I guess that’s the mark of a true accountant-personality right there, haha.

So, I’ve been using a Wiley book to study from, but you can’t go wrong with more studying, so I’ll be using Roger CPA’s online review software from now on too.

I’ve had access to the software for a couple of days, but I haven’t had a chance to sit down with it yet and see how the experience compares to using books. I have read a lot of good stuff about the Roger CPA review though, especially about how engaging it can be.

I wish I could say I’ve been silent for the last several days since I’ve been so busy studying, but honestly, I’ve been studying so little that I was embarassed to write! The four-day weekend was too relaxing, I guess!

Sitting down and studying is definitely a struggle for me–one that I need to win, especially before the school year starts and I have even less free time to squish studying into. I forsee my various tactics of re-learning how to focus (because I haven’t had to sit and study for long periods in months) to become a pretty big topic as I make my way through the CPA exam review process!

I’m going to sit down right now with the Roger CPA review software and get some studying done before it’s time for bed. I’ll have some opinions to post soon!

I officially began studying for the CPA exam 7 days ago. So far I have logged 6.5 hours of study time, which is nowhere near my goal of 2 hours per day.

A summary of my thoughts at this point:

• Doing the multiple choice as a diagnostic is frustrating, so today I started to mix in some basic studying too.
• I think I should come up with a schedule that gives me one day off per week. Or, have a day where I only study for half an hour, instead of whatever I decide on as my goal (I’m sticking with aiming for 2 hours a day for now.)
• The study outlines seem to have a lot of excess information in them. I started out copying out notes on the outlines, but I think I should maybe just read it straight through the first time around, then re-read and highlight, and then re-read and take notes. (I might skip the highlighting step, because I learn best by re-writing.)
• I have been keeping track of my scores on the diagnostic. I will make a table later, after I study and then do more multiple choice questions, to track my improvement over time on different sections.

The first part of my studying process involves answering a whole lot of multiple choice questions, pre-studying, to get a feel for which areas I need to work on the most. This is super frustrating, because I am struggling to remember all topics, so I would rather just get on with the actual studying part.

However, I think there is some benefit to this exercise. At the very least, I’m getting a quick and dirty overview of the questions that will be asked, and I can get a feel for how much of the information I’m familiar with, even if I don’t remember the specifics of how to solve the problems. Also, sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised with how well I do remember some topics.

In the meantime, I am trying to come up with ways to motivate myself to study each day. I have a study goal, although so far I haven’t been sticking to it (too many excuses).

I am also still trying to figure out the best time and place to study in my house. I originally planned to study after work, but I often find I’m too tired to focus. I think I am going to try setting my study time after I have had a chance to fit some exercise in.

Finally, I am trying to motivate myself by “paying” myself per hour. For every hour I study, I put a bit of money aside to save towards buying a netbook. This is the best motivational tactic I can come up with, and it’s working pretty well!

I received my Notice To Schedule on Monday, and they told me to schedule my exams in the next 5-7 days, so here I am, finally scheduling it 4 days later!

It was super easy to schedule it through the Prometric website. There was a link to the website in my NTS, and it was easy to put in your address to find the closest test center, and to pick dates and times. I didn’t have to leave the website to look anything else up. A good experience all around.

Dates

I will be taking FAR on July 29th, and I will be taking REG on November 11th. I’m hoping that’ll give me plenty of time to study for both.

When to study

I’ll have all summer to get FAR out of the way. But I’ll be back in school when it’s time to study for REG. I will still have far more time in the day than someone with a full-time job, so I’ll just have to be careful to block out a few hours of that time to devote to studying for the CPA exam each day.

While reading over my CPA study book’s suggestions for how to score well on writing sections of the CPA exam, I was struck by how similar their advice is to the rules I have learned about blogging.

They suggest that you use short sentences and short paragraphs. I have read many articles about blogging that promote this same writing style, as it is easier to read on a screen. This style of writing also makes it easier to present your points clearly.

The book also suggests using keywords throughout your writing. In blogging, you do this because it helps search engines know what your post is about. For writing on the CPA exam, I suppose using consistent keywords forces you to have a a very clear main point.

So, hopefully blogging will make the writing part something I don’t need to worry about too much. Then again, just because I know these are rules, it doesn’t mean that I actually follow them!

Note about my writing style:

My natural inclination is to be concise. I like to keep things short and clear. Warring with that is the fact that almost all the writing I did during college was for Spanish class. In Spanish, run on sentences are encouraged, haha, so sometimes that can creep into my writing in English. I think it’s an interesting mix of influences.

Well, this is a little off-topic from accounting, but I got my first PDA yesterday! I’ve been wanting one for ages, and I managed to go to the Verizon store the day the Samsung Omnia was on sale, so I ended up with quite a nice one!

I am still figuring out all the things I can do with it. The part I am most excited about is setting up a phonebook and calendar. I could do these with my old cellphone, but I might actually use them on this one, haha.

For those of you who use Twitter from your “mobile device” do you have any recommendations for what application I should use? I’m not sure if I even need to have Twitter in my pocket all day though!

So, I have finally arrived in the pocket-PC age. It’s nice to be here.

Now that I have a new goal in mind for what kind of company to work for, I need to get back into the world of recruiting for accounting so I can find the right company!

Since I wasn’t in university during the spring, I missed some important recruiting opportunities there. Once the recruiting starts in the fall, interviews will come up very quickly, and I might not have a chance to go to enough events before then.

If you haven’t gotten involved yet, accounting recruiting is an interesting process. Accounting companies come to my university, and invite groups of students out to dinner, to “get to know them.” They get the names of these students from the membership list of clubs like Beta Alpha Psi (the accounting honor society), professors, and other connections.

If you connect to enough people at dinners, then you get a chance to have an on-campus interview early on in the fall semester, in September or October.

If that goes well, you might get invited to an office visit later on, and then you might get the job/internship offer you were looking for.

Last year I didn’t have too many on-campus interviews because I felt pretty secure about getting an internship offer from the company I went with. This year, I’m going to take the time to go to some mock interviews at my university’s career center to get back in practice.

It should be interesting to see how recruiting has changed since I went through it last year, with the recession and all. Not only do firms not need to expand the number of employees that they have right now, but many people expect the (currently very low) retention rates at accounting firms to go up. Now that there are fewer jobs out there, those younger employees are expected to stop switching jobs as much as they did before.

So, my non-accounting-related life has been pretty fun and interesting lately. I think I am finally ready to sit down and begin studying for the CPA Exam. Or at least, begin to figure out where to begin studying.

Study Stratgy

I have been reading the intro chapters to my old (free) books for now. I realized when I took GMAT that reading everything the study books have to say is important. For example, this one pointed out that it is better to spend a higher percentage of time on practice questions in a simulated exam situation than on the actual studying. This is something I had learned when I took GMAT but had forgotten.

So, my very loose plan at this point is to set a study schedule that involves a few weeks of studying all of the material, and then more weeks of doing practice questions, taking practice tests, and practicing using the software that I’ll need to be familiar with for the exam.

Which parts to take first?

I am still waiting to hear back about being able to sign up for the exam. I think I applied to sign up for the  Financial Accounting and Reporting (4 hours) section and the Regulation (3 hours) sections first.

I did change my mind a lot at the last minute, and then I went on vacation to Italy, so my memory is a little fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure I stuck with those.

I decided to take FAR first, even though it is what we covered the most of in classes, because it just seems like the sheer volume of information will make it my biggest challenge. I do much better on tests where logic can be applied, rather than just memorized facts.

I decided to take Regulation second because… well… it involves taxes. And my weak spot of hating to memorize pops up there again.

I know Auditing and Attestation (4.5 hours) will require the most studying, judging by the length of the exam, but audit class just made a lot more sense to me than financial accounting or tax classes did, so I’m hoping that feeling will carry over into the CPA exam.

So, for now, I’m familiarizing myself with the test in general, then I’ll set up a more detailed schedule to study for FAR. Hopefully I’ll be able to sign up soon so I’ll know what my timeline is going to look like!