Posts tagged: Gleim Blog

Studying For The CPA Exam During Vacation

January 15, 2013, by No comments yet

Written By Guest Blogger Greg W.

How hard will it be to study during vacation? I don’t know yet, but I will find out soon. I am spending the next four weeks preparing for the audit exam and it just happens to be during my vacation. On the bright side, it is a slower time of year at work. Thank goodness. I will share my experiences as we go.

My wife and I just got back from a much needed weekend getaway that was very overdue. I did not take my study materials with me because I am going to study for a four-week period on an aggressive schedule starting now. We traveled to the Great Smoky Mountains and walked down a Main Street that looked and felt like we were on a movie set. The mountains were magnificent and the people were friendly. As we walked down the street, many people were walking down the sidewalks and cars continually passed by. People were dining, shopping, and visiting with each other. My wife and I traveled back home thinking that we had just left a piece of us back in the Smokies.

So the first part of the four-week program will be to read all 20 study units of AUD and take the true/false exams. It will be an intense week of study that will cover all of the material. Many activities will be vying for my time, but I want to take this exam and put it behind me before busy season gets kicked off.  I have 30 days to study which may seem a little aggressive.  It will be well worth it.

 

Gaining Momentum With My CPA Studies

January 15, 2013, by No comments yet

 

Written By Guest Blogger Erica T.

I took this past weekend to enjoy spending time with family that was in town. When you get a little break, it makes things a little more bearable. This week, I was pretty motivated. I feel like I’m really gaining some ground here, which is a good feeling. There is still a huge, lingering fear of exactly how it’s going to go when I get to the test center. What if I get stuck in traffic and I’m late? How early should I leave? Is it going to be cold in the testing room? Should I wear a jacket? A whole bunch of things run through my mind, but I tend to worry about the simplest of things. The good news is that I have another month before test day, so I’m going to let all that go and concentrate on what really matters, which is the information in the review book! I joined a forum to chat with other people about taking the CPA exam, which has also been another motivating force in this journey! I feel like I have been so motivated the past few weeks that nothing is going to stop me. That’s the truth. I know that, statistically, this test is hard. I am going in there with the assurance that I have devoted enough time and attention to studying and that I’ll be able to perform to the best of my ability. If I don’t get it the first time, that’s okay. I’m not a quitter. I will do this. Nothing is going to stop me.

 

Study Perseverance

January 4, 2013, by No comments yet

Written By Guest Blogger Shelley C.

I am having a bit of a struggle this week staying with my study plan, but I want to compliment Gleim for their diversification in their study materials. Whether I am in the car and have a minute to listen to the audios, on the computer and want immediate feedback to a study session, or reading the EA Review book to catch a few minutes before my child’s band recital, Gleim has all types of study options covered. Much of the Gleim material is presented so that the concept is repeated enough times to thoroughly review it. I am a visual learner and I don’t always recognize what part of the concept I might be unsure of until I write it down or make a diagram. Gleim asks the questions in different ways so that I am able to see what part of the concept I am weak in. I applaud them for this.

I have found that I am building confidence in my study habits; I stay on one section until I get above an 85% on the study session tests. I usually only select 20 questions at time, so I can’t miss more than three and get the score I need to move on. I have also noticed that I need to give myself enough time in between the sections so that I don’t memorize the questions and answers. Again, I applaud Gleim for their variety in study options. As with all parts of our life, we enjoy a bit of variety.

 

Looking Back At My CPA Exam – It’s All About The Timing

October 25, 2012, by No comments yet

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.

 

Welcome CPA Blogger Erica T.!

October 9, 2012, by No comments yet

 

Written By Guest Blogger Erica T.

I just finished college and am so excited about the next step in my career. I have been employed by a CPA firm for the past 3 years. It has been stressful, at times, but I love it. It’s a great feeling to be able to provide other people with a quality service. There are a lot of people who have a lot of questions about anything accounting related, so it feels great to be able to answer those questions. I feel like I have been able to help people, which is one of the best feelings in the world.

I am taking the CPA exam for a few reasons. First and foremost, I have always been a driven person and this is what I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. I knew, before I graduated from high school, that I was very interested in the accounting profession. I graduated from a school that has an excellent accounting plan of study. The teachers there have been encouraging and inspiring! Second, I have two children that I want to be able to provide a comfortable life for. There’s no better way to do that than by working hard at a job that you love.

I am a 25-year-old college graduate with two children and I work full-time. It can get a little wild and crazy. I’m really excited and anxious about taking the exam, but after a lot of online research and talking with licensed CPAs, I feel confident in my choice to study with Gleim. I plan to study hard and devote every second of my spare time (and all my lunch breaks) to studying for the exam. I understand that it’s an extremely hard exam, but I’m also very determined and confident in my ability to pass. I’m also excited to be able to share the experience with potential CPA candidates. This is a valuable asset to the company, to me, and to potential candidates.

 

It’s All Over Except For The Waiting

October 8, 2012, by No comments yet

 

Written By Guest Blogger Christine L.

I took the REG exam last Friday at 6:00 PM. I got home around 10:00 PM. My grand plan involved blogging about it before I went to bed, but instead my reality involved a lot of sleeping. Today was a crazy day. I’m transitioning into full-time work, school is starting, I’m president of my local student Institute of Management Accountants chapter, and I’ve got plans for the weekend which involve a high recreation-to-accounting ratio.

I wasn’t nearly as happy after this exam as I was after AUD, FAR, and BEC. There was a good sample of difficult questions. And the simulation tasks seemed to have been hand-picked to hit my weak spots. But by the next morning I was feeling better about it. I was unhappy about a partnership basis task because I’d already struggled through some similar tasks in the Gleim review program. Looking back on it now, I feel like I was prepared. I put in the hours, and even if partnership basis are hard, I had learned more than a bit about them from those practice simulations. And low pass rates means forty percent, not zero percent. I suspect all that hard work has put me in the top forty percent. I haven’t done a great job of score predicting, and the AICPA flat out does not tell you what questions you got right or even what percent of questions you got right—so even if I knew how many questions I’d missed, I still wouldn’t know my score.

For now, I’m trying not to think about it. This isn’t hard because I’m awfully busy. Worst case is that I didn’t pass and I just have to try again in October. Best case is that I pulled it off—one summer, four months, four CPA exams, a lot of studying, four passes, and one big excuse to celebrate. I’ll know in less than a week. For those of you going back to school this week—have fun!

 

The Waiting Begins

October 4, 2012, by No comments yet

 

Written By Guest Blogger Kathy R.

I took the CPA Audit Exam on Sunday August 26 and was so relieved when I completed my last testlet. I walked out of the testing room in a complete fog. I was psychically and mentally exhausted! On my way home I stopped by Whole Foods and picked up two crab cakes for dinner. Once I arrived home, I started dinner and took a shower to relax. The remainder of the evening was watching mindless TV to attempt to get my mind off the exam.

Going into the exam, I felt totally prepared due to my multiple-choice scores consistently being in the mid-eighties and I felt I had a good understanding of the material. The first testlet required a lot of reasoning skills to determine the correct answer. The second and third testlets were a lot easier. The fourth testlet (simulations) was material I had not studied before. It’s very hard to try to predict your scores, so all I can do is wait for the dreaded email from NASBA.

I am taking a week to two weeks off from studying to rejuvenate my brain cells. I will also attempt to catch up on personal things that I had pushed aside in the last couple weeks before I took the Audit Exam.

Going forward, I am unsure of what section to take next. I need to review the subject content in each of the three remaining sections and try to determine which of them will be the easiest to take and pass in November.

 

Passed! Passed!

October 4, 2012, by No comments yet

 

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.

 

Making Adjustments To CPA Study Plan

September 30, 2012, by No comments yet

 

Studying and working a full-time job simultaneously is an art. You always have to make adjustments and realize when you need to spend more time studying or reviewing. After my vacation, life has been busy. Between trying to catch up on projects and email, studying took a back seat for a couple of days. Getting through each study unit is an accomplishment and it gets me closer to sitting for the exam.

I recently completed 40% of my Gleim review. I continue to make small goals for myself to keep moving forward. I continue to eliminate distractions by studying away from home as much as possible. I also started keeping track of my study time to keep me accountable. Based on the comments of others, I should spend at least 120 hours studying for the AUD exam.

When I need a break from reading, I’ll use the Gleim software to review questions. Gleim software gives you two options to choose from, a study option or a test option. When I want to learn, I use the study option and pick a specific topic to review. I also like how the Gleim software gives you the choice to review questions you’ve never seen, questions you’ve never answered, questions you’ve never answered correctly, or all of the available questions. This is a great opportunity to focus on weak areas. The interface is very user friendly and it’s easy to understand my performance from reviewing reports. Using the software reassures me that, if I study everything, there will be no surprises on exam day. I will continue using to Gleim test prep software up until I sit for the exam.

 

Keep studying and studying and studying!

 

I Passed All Four Sections Of The CPA Exam!

September 21, 2012, by 1 comment

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!