Well, all four parts of the CPA exam are now behind me! I just saw my passing BEC score this morning.

That’s a big relief, and it’s been great to be able to just focus on classwork and not have to study for the next section.

Yay!

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!

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.

On Monday, I have my only final exam for the semester – TAX. (My other classes had time-intensive projects which are all done!)

So, I’m working on studying that. It’s hard to sit down and focus on tax. I’d much rather be watching Roger’s CPA Review videos and learning about Audit.

Roger’s blog had a nice little summary of some changes that’ll be coming to the CPA exam over the next few years. It’s interesting to see how they’re changing the simulations. I wonder if it’ll make it easier. I wonder if it’ll make it a better test?

A few years ago, you had to take the CPA exam all at once. From what I’ve heard, you had a two day window and took two parts each day. That wouldn’t work very well for my study style, so it seems easier the way they present it now. But I’m sure there are other students who don’t like to drag out the studying the way I do! So, I wonder if they have shifted the difficulty from endurance to more difficult questions since then?

I’m happy with my progress on Audit studying so far. Audit seems like it’ll be a much easier section of the CPA exam than FAR and REG, because I already understand a lot of the material.

Unfortunately, the question-writers seem to agree that the material is easier to remember, and ask some pretty complicated multiple choice questions. The multiple choice questions for the AUD section that I’ve practiced so far seem to take me much longer to read than the FAR and REG questions, and then even if you are pretty comfortable with the topic, they throw in a lot of tempting distractor answers that all sound right.

I started working on the third chapter of Roger CPA Review‘s study materials for AUD, so I’m right on track for getting through my initial review on time!

What’s your study strategy?

Photo by Rotorhead

If you’ve been reading my posts about how much time I spend on each stage of studying, you know that notecards are a big part of my process.

Making notecards while I study for the CPA exam forces me to go over each chapter in close detail. It’s like taking notes, only because it’s in notecard form, I can use them as flashcards to study from later.

If you are short on study time, instead of making your own review cards, you can get some Wiley FocusNotes from Roger CPA Review. These look pretty different from my ntoecards, but are probably a more effective way to narrow down the important information. My notecards don’t really distinguish between topics that will be a big part of the exam and topics that will maybe show up in one question.

Has anyone used these to study from that can tell us a little more about them? I only have 2 weeks before REG, but I might order some to help me study for AUD and BEC.

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?