CPA Review: Practice Exams
Along with my Roger CPA preparation materials came a Wiley CD with CPA practice exams on it.
So on Monday I sat down for an hour and a half and went through it. The results? 75% on the multiple choice, and 0% on the simulations because I didn’t type commas into my numerial answers.
Analyzing practice test results
I’m a little concerned about only scoring 75% on the practice questions, but I have hope of being about to study to fix this, because it is only a couple of areas that I got almost entirely wrong that cost me that 25%.
It is much easier to improve if there are only 1 or 2 sections I need to study hard (namely, nonprofits and governmental accounting.) On many other sections, such as liabilities, I feel quite confident and don’t think that I need to spend a lot of time studying that.
Suprising weaknesses
It makes sense that I would miss the governmental accounting and nonprofit questions, because I had never seen these topics before I started studying for the CPA exam. I learned these entirely from my Roger CPA Review materials, which are just that–a review.
However, I was suprised at how poorly I performed on the assets questions. I think I struggled with the questions about the time period over which to amortize intangibles and things like impairment loss.
Complicated questions
It seemed to me that the topics I had studied the most in school had the most complicated questions. I guess the test-makers know what we learn, or our professors know what to teach us to do well on the CPA exam?
However, some areas like consolidation I never learned in school, and just studied from Roger’s exam prep materials, and I did really well on that section. Partly because Roger explained that topic exceptionally well in the review videos, and partly because the practice questions I’ve seen just aren’t as difficult as they could be in that topic.
Computer Adaptive Exam
The CPA is computer adaptive. If you do well on the first 3rd of the multiple choice questions, you get harder questions in the second section. Difficult questions are worth more points than easy ones, so you can get fewer of them right than easy ones, but still get a higher score.
The practice tests I have taken can’t duplicate this, and I wonder which of my practice questions are the “difficult level” or if they’re all easy and moderate perhaps. It would be nice to practice on sets of only easy, only moderate, and only difficult CPA review questions to get a feel for the different levels. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to see some difficult ones on the exam!
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I have to admit that I didn’t do any of the practice exams Becker provides. I didn’t want to sit down for that long at one time, and I felt my time was better spent memorizing and reviewing the govt. and nonprofit stuff (which I hadn’t studied before either) and just doing the practice problems.
With that disclaimer, I can say that I bet a 75% on this practice exam indicates that you’ll pass the real thing. Becker’s practice questions were for sure more difficult than the actual exam’s questions.
Thanks for the encouragement! Let’s hope the questions are a lot easier. I’m a lot more anxious about the simulations, because I figure if I know the multiple choice stuff well enough, I’ll do fine on the simulations, but I’ve never really practiced them.
Thanks again for the detail on your studying process. You’re doing an MSA in the fall – did I read that somewhere? Are you going to try and pass all sections before you graduate from that?
5 more days and 84.5 hours studied – you are almost there! Keep it up!
Did you try the Free 4 hour exam at Gleim which I believe includes both multiple choice and simulations? Also, how did you do on the AICPA released questions in the back of Roger’s book?
Larry: Thanks for the tips! I could not find any free practice exam on their website. I got about 74% of the questions right on the AICPA released questions. However, I wish they explained the answers better. For example, they asked about accrual on the government-wide financial statements, but in the answer they said no accrual should be used in government accounting. However, in my studying I thought that the “government-wide statements” did in fact use accrual, although the individual fund financial statements may use accrual or modified accrual. It made me a bit nervous to see questions like that, because even though I might know a topic, sometimes their answers didn’t seem to correspond with what I studied!
“What Is A Passing Score?
A score of 75 represents a passing score. Does this mean that a candidate must answer at least 75% of the questions correctly to pass? No, it does not!. The scores reported to candidates upon completion of each exam section do not represent the percent correct. Simply stated, a score of 75 reflects the examination performance that is representative of a person who has the necessary knowledge and skills to practice as an entry-level”
“The reported scores are numeric representations of your examination performance. Some professors believe that a raw score [total number of questions correct out of the total number of questions given] as low as 50% may equate to a reported score of 75. Don’t spend time guessing what raw score may equate to a certain reported score. Spend your time studying the exam content to do the best that you can. Don’t worry about other exam candidates.”
http://accounting-financial-tax.com/2009/03/cpa-exam-grading-questions-answers-and-tips/