Hopefully the CPA exam will soon be behind me! I sat for BEC on Monday. As usual, I really didn’t feel that good about it, but I’ll just have to wait and see.

Here are my practice question results for BEC:

I felt pretty comfortable with most of the practice questions by the time I went to take the exam. I think the most frustrating part is that even if you have all of the practice questions DOWN, they come up with new things to fling at you on the test itself. Plus, there are only 90 questions on the test – there are so many questions I could have answered easily but they weren’t asked!

Does anyone have any insights on BEC? Did it seem more difficult than you expected? It did for me…

For those of you who have been paying close attention, I posted my passing AUD score on here last weekend. I intended to write a post then, but it somehow got put off amid studying for midterms and for BEC.

So, I’m a little surprised at how close together my AUD and REG scores are, because I felt least confident about REG and most confident about AUD. I suppose it has something to do with being graded against how everyone else performs. Maybe REG is just harder for most people than AUD is?

So, I wrote a post awhile ago of my AUD Practice Results, which I tracked so I could compare my practice test scores to my actual AUD score.

I got an average score of about 69% my first round through all of the Wiley question, and an average of 73% the second time through. That translated to an 87 on the actual exam.

I wish I had tracked my practice results for the other exams too, because it’s interesting to compare. I’m pretty sure for REG, my average scores on the homework questions were far worse that on AUD.

I am keeping track of my BEC practice questions, but I’m so busy at the moment that I’m not sure I’ll have time to run through them twice. BEC is in about a week!

So, I was never able to access my CPA scores through NASBA’s online system for REG and AUD. It seems like I *still* can’t access them to see my AUD score. I guess they have my birthday or something wrong in their system, since that is was you put in as a sort of “password” along with your section ID number.

It didn’t take too long to get my other scores in the mail once everyone’s score was posted online though, so maybe I’ll know how I did on AUD in a week or two. Makes me wonder how messed up their information on me is though…

In other news, BEC is taking more time than I thought, and I’ve got so much else to do right now. Once again, the best advice I’ve gotten about the CPA exam: don’t wait to take it while you’re working! No matter how busy I am now with classes and part-time work, I don’t know where I’d find the energy to study if I had a full-time job! Kudos to those of you who pulled that off, I am very impressed with all of you

Yesterday was the first day of classes after spring break, but spring doesn’t technically start until Friday. It has been spring-like weather anyway, and I’m loving the sunny days.

I’m starting on the third of four Roger CPA review modules for BEC this week. I have less time than ever to fit in studying, and BEC, while short, seems to have TONS of multiple choice practice questions to get through. Hopefully they won’t take up too much time because I don’t have any more weeks off to catch up in!

I finally sat down and got started reviewing for BEC this weekend. So far, chapter 1 hits on a lot of topics that are familiar from studying for REG, like partnership formation and authority.

Flipping through and seeing what the other chapters cover, it looks like quite a mish-mash of topics. I’ve studied a lot of this material in college, but it looks like it covers several classes worth of topics.

1. Business structures. We touched on these in several of my undergraduate business classes. In my graduate Tax class, we also learned about this in more detail, since we had to learn how different structures are taxed differently.

2. Economic concepts. Now we’re back to macro- and micro-economics. I took those classes several years ago, but hopefully I’ll remember the basics. We’ve also touched on some of these concepts in finance classes.

3. Financial management. Looks like this will be similar to basic finance class subjects.

4. Information technology. I’ve heard from several students who took BEC that they were surprised by how much of the exam seemed to test knowledge that we learned in our Accounting Information Systems class. It looks like this section is around 25% of the exam, so I can see why it’s a big deal. I foresee this being the hardest section for me to deal with.

5. Planning and measurement. Looks like this will take us back to good old cost accounting. Luckily, I actually quite like cost accounting, but I know that many of my fellow students hated that class. In either case, the impression I get is that people find this material boring, but not particularly challenging.
A couple people get annoying by this class because cost accounting doesn’t have as many clear-cut rules as financial accounting does. Of course, remember the 7 deadly myths of accounting-myth number 1: “learning accounting is like learning the rules of a game.”

I’m currently taking an Advanced Accounting course at my university, which covers consolidation accounting, governmental accounting, and accounting for foreign currency exchanges.

All of these were topics on the FAR section of the CPA exam, and now that I’m learning them in depth, and seeing how confusing they are, I am ever more grateful to Roger CPA Review course for teaching me everything I needed to do so well on FAR.

I mean, I did a consolidation worksheet on my exam. And had lots of governmental accounting questions. But now that I’m learning them properly, in a focused, semester-long class, they’re so confusing!

I mean, it’s good to really learn these accounting methods in depth so I can remember them if I need them in the future, but I am really impressed at how Roger took these complex topics and gave me a simpler, condensed version that allowed me to get a 93 on FAR.

Luckily, I passed FAR several months ago. However, for those of you getting ready to take FAR, the Roger CPA Review course blog has a free cpa review video of how to account for investments.

If you want to get a taste for what Roger CPA Review videos are like, or just get a quick review (it’s only a five-minute clip) of how to account for investments, you can see the video here.

Yay! 3 down! I hope I passed Audit on Saturday, but it was more difficult than I expected. On my first two sections of the CPA exam (FAR and REG) I didn’t really think that the testlets got harder as I progressed through the exam, which they’re supposed to if you do well on the prior testlet.

So, when I sat for AUD on Saturday, I kept track of how many questions I was unsure of. In my first testlet, I felt pretty shaky on 8 of the 30 questions. On the second testlet, I was unsure of 13 of the 30 questions. So there was a difference, and I noticed that the questions seemed to ask for more obscure details in the second section.

In the third testlet, I was unsure of about 11 of the 30 questions. I’m not sure how to rank that for difficulty. We seemed to go back to topics that I knew more about there, and that I think probably come up more in the daily tasks of your average auditor.

My methods of marking questions as unsure is hardly scientifically rigorous, and my samples of questions weren’t really big enough, but it was an interesting experience.

Another little statistic I compiled was my performance on the Wiley multiple choice questions that come as part of the Roger CPA Review package. When I get my AUD score, I can see how these raw statistics compare to my score on the actual CPA exam.

Note: The first time through, I did each problem set right after finishing the study unit on them. The second time, I did all of the problem sets in the span of one week right before I sat for AUD. As you can see, my scores improved quite a lot the second time, demonstrating how doing the practice questions themselves can help you learn.

I’ve been neglecting my Roger CPA Review materials over the last few weeks, but I’ll be taking AUD in less than 2 weeks, so it’s back to multiple choice questions!

It’s the time in the semester where the first big tests are happening, and the first big cases are due, so there is plenty to distract me. Roger’s review materials come with software that simulates taking the exam though, so I’ll be sitting down with that over the next two weeks to complete my preparations.

In other news, apparently auditors have been noticing an increase in fraud recently. This article from WebCPA has some troubling statistics about the increase in fraud over the last year.

The scary part is when you stop to wonder how much fraud they’re not even finding. For every fraudster that is caught, how many are out there still getting away with it?

I finally got the notice of my REG score! I passed! I guess that just goes to show that it’s true what they say about how you can feel like you’ve failed when you did just fine.

On the other hand, the online score checking option definitely didn’t work for me. I don’t know why, or if I should contact anyone, or if it’ll work for the next two sections because I scheduled those with a different NTS. Mysterious.

Anyway, good luck for anyone studying for the CPA exam now, or waiting for your scores! If you put in the study hours, and study the right material (which Roger is great at pulling out for you) you’ll do great!

Also, a photo of my dog in a RogerCPA shirt: (it’s a little small for me, and it’s a good color on her no?)