Posts tagged: Gleim Test Prep

CMA Studying: No Pain, No Gain!

March 14, 2013, by No comments yet

Written By Guest Blogger Lynn L. for the Gleim CMA Blog.

Greetings!

I hope all of you are doing well with your studying. This past week has been very unproductive for me. School has restarted, and I have three graduate-level courses to take. This is 20 hours of work every week and requires participation in student organizations where I am an officer. I only got a chance to spend 5 hours studying and have not finished a study unit yet. I guess it is time for me to adjust my study plan. I no longer have a full free day, even during the weekends.

Somewhere on this blog, I saw that a blogger compared studying for the CMA exam to a marathon. I agree that the biggest obstacle for both studying and completing a marathon is ourselves. How to keep studying consistently for the exam is a big problem. Sometimes, I lose interest in studying and take short breaks and watch some TV to relax. I also skipped some steps recently, such as taking the diagnostic quiz. I simply didn’t recall anything I studied for that study unit. I understand that I have not done enough practice questions from test prep yet. I hope to spend the last couple of weeks answering those questions in a test-like environment.

I am now planning to focus on the knowledge transfer outlines and test prep questions for the next couple of weeks. I know my weak areas are those conceptual questions, so I will also do some reviews of previous study units at the end of every week. There is not much time left for me to study and pass Part 1, so I am hoping to get into study mode in the coming week. I will also need to adjust my study plans to fit my work/class schedules.

The phrase, “no pain, no gain” always occurs to me. I know I have to give up some time for activities and friends and spend that time studying from now on. Friends or family may not fully understand your sacrifice and may no longer ask you to join them. However, I believe that once I successfully pass the exam and announce the result to everyone, they will start to understand everything. They will understand that this is an investment I made in myself and they will be proud of me. So let me be more focused with CMA studying, and I am sure I will make it!

 

Finished Studying The EA Book – Now Onto Practicing EA Questions!

January 4, 2013, by No comments yet

 

Written By Guest Blogger KP.

I made it through the entire book . . . all 20 study units! I finally finished my reading for the Businesses section of the exam. I cannot tell you what a relief it is to be done with this. These past few months have been very difficult for me with work, grad school, job interviewing, and trying to finish my last EA exam. I now have the software questions and the online studying left, but these parts have always gone pretty fast for me. I seem to retain information very well, and I am hoping it takes only a few weeks of final review. I will still be on pace for taking the exam on my desired test date. I start my new job soon and would love to have the exam done before I start

Once I finish the online and software questions, I always go back and quickly read through the book again to refresh my memory. However, the Businesses book is nearly 500 pages long, so I will not have time to do that this time around. Therefore, I really want to make sure I am keyed into only the important concepts. I am glad that I have been highlighting the important concepts in the reading material, which were covered by the review questions. I am just amazed at how much material there is in the Businesses section, and I am really curious about what will be on the exam. I felt like I was really prepped for the first and third sections of the EA exam by following the Gleim 3-part system, and I am feeling confident that the second part will be the same. I am just nervous because everyone calls it the hardest part! Oh well, I am almost there!

 

Deciding Which Section Of The CPA Exam To Study For Next

January 4, 2013, by No comments yet

 

Written By Guest Blogger Greg W.

After spending a lot of time thinking about the CPA exam and its different parts, I decided to switch from studying BEC to studying AUD because of my familiarity with the material. I had only made it through two study units of BEC when I started a new job and had a new grandbaby! Life is awesome, but it often throws you curve balls. I am excited to get into the routine of studying again.

This month at my job, I will be working with individual, corporate, and partnership tax returns, which will limit my study time until April. So, with the approval of my boss, I will schedule the AUD exam around the busy season. There are only a few negative aspects to my job, such as it takes an hour of travel each way and there is no time to study during my work day (I guess that is normal for most jobs though). I will make the most of all my time off though.

I plan to use an accelerated method for studying for the exam, which includes reading each study unit and taking the T/F exams for all 20 study units during the first week. Each week changes the way you study the material, with the final week concentrating on testing. This is not the recommended way of studying, but it will work great for my schedule.

 

The REG Portion Of The CPA Exam: “WHOA!”

December 27, 2012, by No comments yet

Written By Guest Blogger John E.

Hey everyone. I just came back from my REG exam. My first reaction to this exam was “whoa!” This had to be the most challenging of all sections. I know the review for this part was very challenging for me. I allowed myself seven weeks to prepare. I spent 134 hours studying and answered 1,900 test prep questions to prepare me for this section. As I have stated in my earlier posts, I don’t think the material is tough to understand, there are just so many variations and details to consider. Especially when it comes to taxation and computation and the components to apply as it relates to income, loss, gains, and deductions. I felt that there was more to memorize overall, even when compared to FAR. Remember the devil is in the details.

On test day I was well-rested. The two previous nights before the exam, I managed to get eight hours of sleep. I arrived for the test about an hour and forty-five minutes before my time slot. I wanted to get there early enough so I could do some last minute skimming and light reviewing. Fifteen minutes before my exam, I was wrapping it up. I felt confident with my review when I was going into the Prometric center.

During my first testlet, I told myself to breathe slowly, don’t panic, and just focus on timing. It is way too easy to get caught up in a tough question or two and end up burning extra time off the clock. Every second counts. So after going over a few questions and flagging a few that I truly didn’t know, I made a quick recovery of lost time as
I blazed through testlet two. Fortunately testlet two was less difficult for me than testlet one. My goal was to budget thirty-five minutes in each testlet. I spent forty-one minutes in testlet one and thirty or so minutes in testlet two. Testlet three felt easiest of all. In each testlet, I flag questions I am unsure about and use that as a visual indicator of how well I am doing. The number of questions I was unsure about appeared to be on par with all the other sections of the CPA exams I have taken. After wrapping up with testlet three, I was heading into the task-based simulations with one hour and fifteen minutes left.

Even with over an hour left to complete six simulations, I wasn’t ready for a bathroom break. The five minutes wasn’t worth sacrificing. It could mean the difference between passing and failing, which was a risk I couldn’t take. The simulations were hard and involved complex scenarios with eloquently written instructions. I quickly glazed over all six questions, scoping out those that were the most difficult and opting to start with the most familiar problems. The authoritative research simulation wasn’t too hard to complete. Then there were three familiar simulations I felt fairly confident about. After completing four of the six simulations, I had roughly twenty minutes to spare. I know this is cutting it close, but I knew what the questions required. I feel 50% confident about my responses. They were haphazard and somewhat-educated responses at best. I didn’t know the content well enough. Nor did I have enough time to teach myself. However, I know it is better to plug in an answer than to leave it blank while you are researching the authoritative sources. All in all, I felt like my performance in the simulations was reasonable enough to get me a passing score. My advice to you is to study hard and try to retain every detail possible. You just might be surprised of what is asked on test day. Eerily enough I have the same post-CPA exam feeling as I did for the other sections taken: unsure and optimistic. This feeling, however, is better than the opposite.

 

Practice Exams – Marking My Weaker Areas

December 27, 2012, by No comments yet

Written By Guest Blogger Jaime C.

I read Study Unit 10: Evidence — Objectives and Nature in my AUD textbook quickly before bed the other night. The material was easy to understand, and I could recall evidence gathering from my auditing experience in public accounting. I remember sending out positive confirmations while auditing employee benefit plans and frequently following up on unreturned confirmations. It all makes perfect sense that evidence obtained directly by the auditor and from independent sources is generally more reliable.

I was excited to take Multiple-Choice Quiz #1 online and find my weaknesses on the subject. To be honest, I expected my initial score for Study Unit 10 to be 100%. Eager to take the initial test, I raced home from work the next day and opened my laptop. The questions were not quite what I had expected, and I quickly realized that the material contained more than just examples of documentation. My grade was only 70%. Feeling deflated, I reviewed the answers to all of the questions to pick up more information on the subject.

For the past few days, I’ve been taking practice exams with Gleim CPA Test Prep Software. I like the immediate feedback and the ability to export marked questions. This way I can accumulate questions when I get stumped and use the detailed answer explanations for a study guide to review later. However, the immediate feedback is something I get used to and struggle with during a practice exam. When I take a practice exam, it seems like I mark most questions for review in order to know for sure whether or not I answered correctly. Not only do I want to review the questions I answered incorrectly, I also want to review the questions I answered correctly so I am absolutely certain of the answer the next time I see that question.

 

REG Study Tips For The CPA Exam

December 12, 2012, by 3 comments

 

 

Written By Guest Blogger Cameron W.

I’ve been studying for the REG section since August 13th, and boy has it been a challenge. At least three or four times a week, I go straight to Starbucks after work and study until it’s dark outside. Now I am in my final review and completing as many 40-question multiple-choice quizzes in Test Prep that I can up until my test on Thursday. I have been getting frustrated because a lot of the material looks very familiar, but I keep second guessing myself. My friend who is student teaching gave me the following tips that I thought may help others:

 

1. Slow down. If you read these types of questions too fast, you could miss an important detail that changes the whole meaning of the sentence.

 

2. Break each problem down into segments. Don’t read a three or four sentence problem as a whole, break it down into as many parts as you can so that you know what is being presented.

 

3. Answer the question before looking at the answer choices. After you have read the problem, try to come up with an answer without looking at the answer choices. Then, find the answer choice that most closely matches the answer you came up with. Doing this will show you that either you truly KNOW the material or that you still have more studying to do.

 

4. Have a positive attitude. This is self explanatory.

 

I hope I helped somebody out there. I haven’t been getting high scores on my quizzes in Study Mode, but today is a new day. Hopefully, my scores will start rising rapidly and my studying will pay off by the time I take the REG section. Thanks and God bless.

 

 

Tackling REG – Week 1 of Studying

October 17, 2012, by No comments yet

 

Written By Guest Blogger John E.

I am here looking at my final section of the CPA exam. I cannot believe that I am almost through with this enduring process. So far I have managed to pass FAR, AUD, and BEC. Now my eye is on the prize with REG. After one week into REG, I can already tell it won’t be easy. Of course I never thought it would be. Prior to jumping into REG, I had heard that this part is arguably second to the level of difficulty that FAR brings. Right now my average weighted score using the Gleim Test prep is looking fairly weak. In fact my scores are the lowest in comparison to the other three sections. I am having some trouble with the subjects on business law. I took two business law courses during my undergraduate and master’s program, but I don’t remember the content being so intense. I actually remember doing well in my business law courses. I should know by now that anything on the CPA exams is just fair game for additional complexity. At this point, I guess I am way too early in the review process to worry. A little concern is healthy, but I am not to the point of stressing myself out. I mean I am not even halfway through the review process. Everything seems to pull together during final review in the last two weeks before the exam. This is how it has always been.

So what materials and strategy am I using to Review? I am using my 2012 Gleim book and Test Prep Software. I take multiple practice tests for each study unit and perform thorough reviews on questions whether right or wrong. I will take as many tests as necessary until I receive a passing score of 75% or better. Once I pass a study unit I will move to the next study unit. I will repeat this process until I complete all twenty study units. Finally, I will proceed to a final review of REG in the last two weeks before the exam. I will review multiple study units (typically 5 study units at a time) within a practice test of twenty questions, and I will aim for a 75% or better. I will repeat this process through all of the study units. I choose twenty questions because it is an optimal number for me. On weak areas I will make sure to take notes and improve these areas. On the night before the exam I will perform only a light review of weakest areas. Getting plenty of rest the night before is imperative.

 

 

Exam Studying Tricks for the Memory-Challenged

October 9, 2012, by No comments yet

 

 

Written By Guest Blogger Amy W.

I’m less than 2 weeks away from test day. Unlike my experiences with Part 1 and Part 2, I am not breaking out into a cold sweat thinking about the upcoming test. That’s either because I’m feeling confident about my test prep skills or because I’m just too tired of test taking to care! All kidding aside, I’m happy to say that I feel pretty comfortable with my grasp of the material in EA Part 3. Going through the material again from the beginning was a great study idea; it’s all making a lot more sense the second time around.

 

My stack of 3×5 cards for form numbers has grown since last week. I’m using a variety of techniques to help me memorize these numbers. For example, how do I remember the difference between the form numbers for Injured Spouse Allocation and Request for Innocent Spouse Relief? Injured Spouse is Form 8379 while Innocent Spouse is Form 8857. Well, the injured spouse has been injured, so the “8” got injured and is now a “3”. Here’s another one. Claim for Refund and Request for Abatement is Form 843. I just couldn’t lock this in my head (I’ve said it before, I’m memory-challenged) until I realized that if I take the last two words of the name of the Form and reverse them – Abatement for – that’s my clue for the numbers “84”. Okay, it’s silly, but it helps!

 

CPA Studying With So Much Going On In Life

October 8, 2012, by No comments yet

 

Written By Guest Blogger David G.

Studying is tough when there is so much going on in life, but focusing on completing the CPA exams tends to help me concentrate when I do not feel like taking time out to study. The one-month countdown clock to the exam starts tomorrow, and I will be at a football game in the evening. This weekend will be the third weekend in a row that I will have something going on. The previous two weekends I had to leave town on Friday afternoon and return on Sunday night because of a very sick relative. This weekend will hopefully be less stressful and happier. I plan to take my Gleim book with me and study before the game. I have planned to have several hours available to review and study with a few hours left before game time for rest and relaxation.

I made notes for the first couple of study units. I have the main points of SOX, and the acronyms for part one. For part two, I have written down the equations, definitions, and charts. These two sections are long and it takes a while to get through them, but from my understanding, these are two very important parts of the Business Environment and Concepts exam. I need to do all that I can to help me remember and this seems to help tremendously. Also, it serves as a way to review quickly when I begin my studies each day.

I’m at work now and it is time for me to head home to study before I go to my son’s first high school ballgame. He is in the band and is very excited. I sure could use this evening to study, but I guess I need to have my priorities in order.

 

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.