Posts tagged: CPA Exam Scores
CPA Scoring & Juggling Studying
Written By Guest Blogger Jaime C. for the Gleim CPA Exam Blog.
I just read an article today about a CPA Exam scoring error affecting the simulation parts of the REG and FAR exams in 2011 and 2012. Apparently, students who initially received failing scores are now being told that they passed. That is incredible news for those particular candidates! I picture them jumping for joy and sighing in relief after hearing about their corrected scores.
Another week has passed without much to report. However, my commitment to continue studying and pass the exam is faltering. All my greatest intentions have nearly been destroyed. I have been completing the work of two people at my office and my motivation has tanked. I continue to be told that the area we live in is an employers’ market, but each resume that comes across my desk is worse than the last. I work all day to meet strict deadlines and manage the employees in my department, only to lug my laptop home, grab a quick bite for dinner, and resume working on the couch for several more hours.
My exam is scheduled for four weeks from now, and the anxiety of not covering all of the material sufficiently is mounting. I carry my book and my iPod with me everywhere I go, just in case there is a chance to study or listen to the audio reviews. By the end of a long work day, my mind is not ready for reading or answering multiple-choice questions. I was doing great with listening to the audio reviews, but with so much on my mind from the office, I can listen to a whole study unit without hearing a single phrase. I know this is a dilemma for many CPA candidates trying to juggle studying with everything else in their lives. This was the whole reason I had placed the CPA exam on the back burner for so long.
Time for Review – REG
Written By Guest Blogger John E.
Since my last post, I have managed to stay on a loose schedule and complete the remaining six study units. Now it is time to move on to the final review. I like to have two solid weeks to complete a comprehensive review of all the study units. However, this time I have just about 10 days to go until Halloween. That’s right, I will be taking my exam on Halloween. Real spooky! (Sorry, this post is a bit late and Halloween has already happened!) I credit my shortage of time to the extended family visits, one trip to Disney, the change in season (seriously), and the lack of determination that I had in the last three exams. I’m just getting exhausted I guess. I feel so close to completion, but I know I’m not. I know it takes passing all four sections to become a CPA. I have found myself daydreaming and looking past REG somewhat. I know this is dangerous, but I cannot help to think about the time when I can just come home and not worry about making time for studying. It’s good that I am acknowledging my change in study behavior and not just ignoring it. Ten days is still adequate to pull off a successful final review.
After REG, I will focus on completing some home projects. The funny thing is I have a collection of projects that are works in process. For some people, that kind of work may seem like pulling teeth. However, I prefer such tasks over the becoming a CPA process. After every section of the exam, I start a new project, but somehow never finish it by the time scores are released. I’m always quick to start my review of the next section of the exam before I complete what I was working on. My philosophy is to go with the momentum. When you’re hot, you’re hot. For all of you CPA candidates going through the same struggle: sacrifice is temporary. This will be over soon. You will reflect and appreciate.
Looking Back At My CPA Exam – It’s All About The Timing
Written By Guest Blogger Christine L.
Taking all four parts of the CPA exam in four months is not how most people choose to do it, but for me, it was logical that I try. I didn’t have a job; scheduling conflicts forced me to push graduation out a semester, and graduating in the summer didn’t sound that exciting. So I tried it. I did it, and it was hard. It would have been hard no matter how I did it, but I it could have been easier had I known some things I know now.
I already had some things to say about academics, but really, the academics were not harder than my classes. It’s the volume of these things that makes them hard. It took me more hours than I thought it would. Some study units took more than six hours, some took less, but on day one, I didn’t know how it would add up. There are people who will tell you that you can do it in half of the hours I spent. Of course first-time pass rates for these exams are not real high, and you might wonder if there is some relationship between these two facts. I wanted to pass more than I wanted to spend my time elsewhere. That sort of contradicts the part where I wanted to pass all four parts in four months, and this was an issue. I was always chasing after myself—if I take a break now, will I be able to make it up tomorrow? Studying for hours was never a problem. The problem is that I had to keep each day’s hours reasonable if I wanted to keep going for four months, but I miscalculated because my experience with the first exam led me to underestimate how many hours I’d spend on the last exam.
I didn’t spend enough time on REG. What I would do now is to take all the Gleim sample tests for every part first, and stat with the one with the lowest score and work down. You’d have to vary this though, depending on when the blackout month(s) fall into your planned schedule.
The real lesson I took away from this is that passing the CPA exams has as much to do with your life, your job, your school schedule, and your finances as it does with all that intellectual stuff. If you’ve taken 150 hours of accounting courses and done well, you’ve proven that you can handle the material. What’s left is about discipline and concentration and an awful lot of just keeping at it. Plan it out, think it through, know yourself, and let the test prep take care of itself.
Looking Back – The Academics
Written By Guest Blogger Christine L.
About a month ago I took, and just barely passed, my last section of the CPA exam. I did it in four months, studying more or less full-time. I learned things along the way, and I have a long list of things I want to share, but my list is too long to fit into one blog post. However, there were two broad issues: how the content of the exam was and wasn’t what I expected and how that changes if you’re trying to do the exams in a four months.
The exams were easier and harder than I expected. Harder because fourteen hours covered everything I’ve learned in two years, easier because the depth of the material was less than what I’d endured in advanced accounting courses. I put in as many hours studying for my college exams, but it wasn’t comparable. CPA exams will cover everything you know you know, things you don’t realize you know, and things you didn’t realize anyone knows. It wasn’t impossible, but I still had to do it.
One course I would have, but didn’t, take, was corporate tax. I took all the courses required to sit for the exam and all the courses required to graduate, but in a two-year Master’s program, that doesn’t leave a lot of choices, and corporate tax was not on my short list.
I should have taken fewer general quizzes and more targeted quizzes. I started out taking extra quizzes each day, and I figured that taking quizzes on study units I’d already covered would be keep me from forgetting everything. But I should have taken quizzes not on all twenty study units, but on a selection of the hundred-plus subunits.
The Gleim CPA program has over 11,000 questions, which blows past every other system I looked at. That number may sound excessive, but divide that by four exams, twenty study units, and over a hundred subunits, and you end up with roughly twenty questions per subunit. And when you realize you want to master all the subunits, you realize that you need all those extra questions.
Pass, Pass, Pass, Pass!
Written By Guest Blogger Christine L.
Yesterday was score reporting day. It’s no secret that I was rushed for this last exam. Actually I was rushed for the whole summer, but I was especially rushed for REG because I wanted to be done on the last day of the summer testing window. I thought my chances of passing were pretty good. I spent all day yesterday in a seminar on statistical techniques for detecting fraudulent transactions. I was in heaven—math! But I had an ulterior motive, which was to check my e-mail every 15 seconds. I got the e-mail just as my phone’s battery died. And I passed! I passed all four exams in one (very busy) summer and passed each one on the first try. Lest you think I’m superhuman, my REG score was 75, the lowest possible passing score. But I feel lucky, not unhappy. I worked for that 75, and I passed, and I earned it.
Should I have spent more time on REG? Of course. Actually, there are a whole list of things I would have done differently had I known what I know now. I plan to blog all about it next week, but for now, school is back in session. But I want to thank all the folks at Gleim for giving me the opportunity to pull this off. The Gleim system not only covered every obscure question on every exam, it gave me the tools to work at my own pace. It allowed me to work around a part-time job and family commitments. I could never it done it without Gleim.
Post-BEC Exam
Written By Guest Blogger John E.
Exam day has finally passed. Time is now passing too slowly as I anticipate a score release in the next few days. Tropical storm/Hurricane Isaac may have pushed this back a few additional days. I ended up leaving the Prometric center with the same old feeling and asking myself the same question as I had before with FAR and AUD: “what just happened in there?” Regardless of how well you prepare yourself and all the awesome scores you log leading to the final days, you seem to leave a little bewildered and less assured than you were before you stepped into the testing center. These exams are designed to daze and confuse. Well, at least I think so. I am not saying that think I did bad. However, the mechanism of these exams seem to leave you with just a little bit of doubt. I studied very hard for BEC. I managed to log 126 hours preparing for it.
I remember leaving the testing center and running to my car to go over some questions that I wasn’t sure about. The good thing is that I have a pretty good memory. I was able to remember more than a few questions from the exam. I quickly referenced my Gleim book to determine whether I chose the right answer or not. I know that my findings at this point were irrelevant, but I was looking for a little peace of mind. After doing this, I started feeling better as I began to realize that I was in fact answering these questions correctly. Well, most of them at least. Overall, I would have to say I enjoyed studying for AUD better. Some of the concepts in BEC were just sticky for me. I really don’t see many of these subjects in my line of work. Good luck to those taking on BEC.
Final Days before BEC
Written By Guest Blogger John E.
I have just a few days before my BEC exam and I am feeling quite confident. I have been keeping up with the same final review strategy that I used in the past. I believe I am ready to take the exam. So far, my scores have been around 75%-90%. I still catch a few curve-ball questions every now and then. There is only so much you can retain. Even though I have already passed FAR, I feel the BEC is no exam to joke about. Yes, it is only 3 hours long, but this exam is the kitchen sink of all sections. As an accountant, this exam draws business knowledge that I do not use in my current practice, so applying these foreign concepts (such as macroeconomics, microeconomics, IT, and cost accounting) can be a real challenge at times.
Aside from final review and sitting for the exam, I am looking forward to a little time off before grades post so I can unwind and decompress from my CPA marathon. As I have stated before, I intend to pass all four sections within a six-month window. Yes, this is highly stressful, but possible. Beyond being pressure cooked for the past few months, house chores are slipping behind, and I have many errands to complete. I would like to stress the importance of having a spouse that supports you 100% during this time. You will need a strong support team along the way.
Passed! Passed!
Written By Guest Blogger Christine L.
When I took AUD, my first section of the CPA exam, I had no idea that the AICPA had score release dates when a block of us worried candidates would simultaneously get hit with a brick composed of approximately 55% misery and 45% happiness. My AUD e-mail was a surprise and came much sooner than I’d expected. It took me hours to get up the courage to open it. This time around I took two exams inside of two weeks, but I knew in advance that I would get two score reports dropped on me in one day. I spent all day yesterday wondering what was taking so long. The first e-mail mentioned BEC…and it said PASS. It also said I had credit for AUD, BEC, and FAR, which did confuse me a bit. So I went to the AICPA website and saw 88 for FAR, and a 92 for BEC! It took another half hour for the FAR report to pop up in my mailbox. It’s a good thing I hadn’t thought about checking the website earlier because I would have been hitting the refresh key until my finger cramped. So besides being overjoyed, where am I now?
There’s a school of thought that says that anything over 75 on the CPA exams is over preparation. It’s pretty easy to regret that strategy when you end up with a 74. I was sure that if I even passed FAR at all that the score would be more like 78 than 88, and I based that on how I felt about AUD just before walking in and just after walking out of the exam. But my FAR score of 88 beats my AUD score of 82. Does this mean that my feeling that AUD would be my worst exam was correct? And how could I be over prepared for BEC when I only studied for two weeks? I don’t know, maybe my spectacular 92 is from my math background, maybe it had something to do with how well my courses synced up to the exams. The truth is that none of this speculation makes any difference in what I’m doing next, which is studying like crazy for another week, taking REG, and passing it. If I can do three, I can sure do four.
I Passed All Four Sections Of The CPA Exam!
Written By Guest Blogger Anne R.
I Passed! I just found out that I passed the Financial section of the CPA exam! That means that I passed the whole exam and I am finished with it forever! I will not be one to slack on my continuing education because I never want to risk having to take the exam again. I can’t wait to start the process to receive my license and certificate!
It feels so great to have finally passed all four parts of the CPA exam. I have been studying for and taking this test for 3 years now. However, once I really started studying seriously, it only took me one year to pass all four parts. I passed REG last July, BEC in January, AUD in May, and FAR in August. I spaced out the four tests because I needed to take breaks in between studying for each part in order to keep going.
I think the key to passing the CPA exam is just to give it your best the first time and put in the hours of studying. It is a difficult exam, but I think the most difficult thing about it is the time and discipline it takes. You have to commit to missing out on social events, waking up early and/or staying up late, and really focusing during your study time. For the first two years of studying, I would spend some of my “study time” playing a couple games of solitaire, checking my email, etc. – only for 5 minutes (I would tell myself). All those minutes add up! A good way to get around this temptation for me was to order the book. This way I could do a lot of my studying without a computer in sight. I also went to almost every social event and would schedule my studying around my life. In order to pass, you have to schedule your life around your study time, and you have to be really focused in order to use that time wisely. In fact, when I’m missing out on something, it helps me to focus more on my studies because my time is valuable. While I was studying for FAR, my whole family and my husband went to see the new Batman movie…and I stayed home. That was a great 3 hours of studying though; since I was missing the movie, I wanted to make my suffering worthwhile.
So I leave you with this: be encouraged, no matter how many parts you’ve failed or let expire. You can pass if you put in the time and focus. It’s okay to start over, give yourself a clean slate, and get serious about the CPA exam. You can do it, because I finally did!
Follow Us
