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.”

Edit: I’m studying for my tax exam tomorrow, and I’m feeling even less confident about REG now. I wish I had studied for my tax exam before taking REG! The topics I’m studying now are reminding me a lot of the questions that were on my exam…

So, taking REG is over with. After all those hours of studying, it came down to a couple of hours of questions. I don’t feel very good about the multiple choice, but I think that the simulations went okay. According to Another71′s score release predictions, I might just be in the first wave of scores released around November 17th.

So, in total I spent about 87 hours studying for REG, and I felt pretty unprepared going in. I would’ve liked to have been able to practice the multiple choice several more times. REG felt like a collection of random factoids I had to memorize, so I would forget the first bits of information by the time I got to the end. Roger’s mnemonic devices really helped out – if I have to do it again, I’m going to spend a lot more time learning all of those.

Now I get to start studying for the Audit section of the CPA exam. I’ve switched my REG books out for my AUD Roger books. Starting the review for a new CPA section is always a little exciting, because I can plan how much more I’m going to study for this section than for the last!

Hopefully I can have a smoother graph than the one for REG – lots of hours in the beginning AND in the end. Also, I have a week off for Thanksgiving, so I plan to fit in as many hours as possible that week.

Well, what with interviews and exams last week, CPA studying fell to the bottom of my to-do list. I managed not to drop too much, but I have been studying for 2 months now, and I have exactly one month to go, but I am only halfway through the Roger CPA Review course material.

I think the first half of the material is technically more than half the content of the Regulation section of the CPA exam though, so I’m not doing too badly.

Also, my audit and tax classes at the moment are covering a lot of the topics I’m studying for REG. I struggled the most on corporations so far, because I haven’t covered them in any class yet. S Corps and Partnerships are fine though, because of tax class!

I thought about adjusting my study strategy and cutting out making notecards, but on the topics I’m not very familiar with, such as corporate taxes and contract law, the extra review helps, and I can use them as a review tool the week before the test.

Updated graph of how many hours I’ve studied for REG per week:

As you can see, my hours have been dropping in the last couple of weeks, rather than increasing substantially like I’d hoped for. At least it didn’t drop to one hour in a whole week like in week 3!

So, I was reading a post over at SmartCookie – CPA to Be about how she studies for the CPA exam. She mentioned spending time with a co-worker doing multiple choice questions and mentioned that they try to do at least 100 a night!

Now, I’m not sure how long that takes her, but I added up the hours I spent going over the first 100 multiple choice questions for the REG section of the CPA exam, and it took me over 3 hours to do those 100 problems! I definitely don’t have time to do 100 every night!

Now, I do what Roger suggested as a good CPA preparation tactic- I do the questions slowly and read each answer to understand the rules behind it, whether I got it right or wrong. I usually take some notes. I know I won’t remember it all, but I figure the notes will help a little bit of it stick in my head.

When I finally finished the slow round of multiple choice questions when I was studying for FAR, I never went back and did them over at a higher speed. (Roger suggests that you go back and do this, but I just didn’t have the motivation.) I did use the software to do timed practice questions, to make sure I could judge how quickly I needed to move on the real thing.

Anyone else out there who has a different approach to multiple choice questions?

If you missed my little post about diversity and accounting recruiting, check it out here. There are a lot of really insightful comments already, and they make very interesting reading.

Today was a good first day. I have great professors and interesting classes. It seems like the Masters of Accounting program is going to include a lot more reading and discussion than the undergraduate Accounting program.

Today I had class, went to the gym (its one of my forms of procrastination, but good for me!) and did some reading for class (there’s still some hours of reading ahead for me tomorrow.)

I tried to fit in an hour of studying for REG, but bedtime came too early, so only got in 45 minutes.

REG So Far

Right now, I have watched the Roger CPA videos for the REG-1 section (individual taxes.) That covered in about 3 hours what I spent a whole semester learning at school!

Before I watched the videos I spent some time reading over the Roger book chapter, which took awhile because it’s a long chapter.

Now I’m going back through Roger’s CPA review book and making note cards. This is VERY time consuming, but I tried to do it the week before the exam for FAR, and it was too late by then. Now when I get through all of the sections, I’ll already have made note cards to review with.

Also, I’m  not super comfortable with the topics on the Regulation section of the CPA, so some extra review before I even attempt the homework problems can only help! My CPA exam preparation strategies are always open to changes and improvements!

So, as I begin preparing to take the CPA exam, I’m making an assessment of what CPA review materials I can get for free, and what I still need to get.

Lucky for me, a family friend gave me this whole box of books for free! I almost couldn’t even carry these books up to my room. I’m small, but there are still a lot of pages of study material in this box:

The dates of the books range from 2004 to 2008. I know that the CPA exam changes a little each year, but I’m guessing the majority of what’s in these books will be good study materials. Looks like I’ve got Becker, Wiley, and Gleims in my big box. Now I just need to figure out what has changed on the exam since these books were published!