Take this all with a grain of salt as this was absolutely a hail mary attempt for me.
15 years in tax. I do zero comp, review or audit. The closest I come to any of that is financial statement prep/write up using quickbooks.
My tax experience has gotten me pretty good at analyzing financials, but my goal is always to report lower income/less tax liability.
I am feeling somewhat confident on this exam. It was a very different experience from FAR. I feel slightly less mule kicked in the head after I was done. Perhaps its because I got more than 3 hours sleep the night before?
The MCQ's felt fair overall. I am conflicted as to whether the MCQ's got any harder. I feel like the 2nd testlet was more of an eliminate 2, vs the first testlet I was able to eliminate 3. I did not notice the questions being too much longer or wordier, but perhaps the answers were wordier.
I tried to pound through the MCQ's as fast as possible I'm not a marker and reviewer. I also tried to recognize that this is something I do or do not know, If you don't know it, eliminate what you can and pick the best remaining option and move on.
I think I was through MCQ's in about 1:10, so 2:50 on the clock.
3rd testlet had some tricky SIMS. I was able to use the AL a bit, so I feel somewhat confident. I wish I had more time for this to read more of the examples in the book. Clock was getting down to 2 hours and I did not want to waste time and get burned like in FAR so I made the best attempt and moved on with 1:59.
15 minute break. Clif bar and gatorade. Always take the break so you can move around a bit, or just breathe.
4th testlet was ok. Used AL where I thought it would help, made sure to be done by the 1 hour mark.
Last testlet really wasn't too bad. I could have been done at 0:30 left, but I just kept reviewing things are trying to use AL to confirm any questions I had. Unfortunately the 5th testlet provided the LEAST amount of areas that AL could have helped me. I probably could have used more time on #3 or #4, but it is what it is. FAR taught me a huge lesson on time management.
Hoping for a pass, but at least it was a good learning experience. 3 weeks, 85ish hours, Roger videos, 1000 Roger MCQs 75.2%. AICPA sample test multiple times. Pretty much 0 Research or SIMs practice, but I did select them all in a testlet in Roger just to flip through them to see what they might be like. Fairly confident that SIMs practice is mostly a waste of time but we'll see.
Good luck all. Keep on keeping on.
Do whatever you have to to get sleep before the exam. This was an afternoon exam for me as that was the seat that opened up 3 weeks ago. All 3 EA exams and FAR were in the morning at a test center about 1 hour from home, and I get there an hour before test time. (They took me right in as soon as I walked in so I beat the rush.)
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