I agree. They made AUD much more capstone-like and comprehensive, incorporating about 25% of FAR – meaning you have to know the GAAP disclosure and recognition rules for uncertainties, contingencies, estimates/reserves and subsequent events. You have to understand and know the same journal entries on FAR – 2 of the mock exams had a deferred tax asset 5 line journal entry, and then remembering how to disclose a lawsuit contingency when it is a range with 2 values equally probable (GAAP rule is recognize the lowest end of the range, and make a disclosure that there could be an additional loss up to the highest end of the range).
I didn't do the full exams all in one sitting. But I was scoring like 70 on the m/c and wasn't really scoring the sims. Becker doesn't even grade them correctly; Becker gives 45% weight to the sims and 55% weight to the m/c which is unrepresentative of the real thing, which gives a full 50% weight to the sims, and throwing one pre-test sim out, so really its even MORE weight to the 7 counted sims. If the 72 m/c on the real exam between the first 2 testlets is 50% of your score, then each m/c only counts for 50/72 = .69% of your score, not even 1 point!!! And then each sim (50/7) counts for 7.14% of your score, or about 7 points each sim. So that's why missing even one sim will cost you 7 points on the exam, while missing 7 m/c questions would only cost you 5 points. So sims are clearly way more important. And problem is, one or 2 of the sims require you to understand the totally and documentation and purpose fully before you can answer ANY of the questions, so you basically can't even do the sim till you've read through all the procedure's purpose, the memos, and then the F/S and/or chart of accounts/other supporting documents.
The most difficult was the format – what they were asking on the sims is not straightforward like they used to. It's not like before (identify which threat to independence each scenario is threatening; or identify yes or no whether each situation impairs independence). No. It's more like, here's a bunch of documents. For each scenario – what test of control would detect or prevent this control deficiency(you have to count and spot the deficiency in the sample, it's not given), or for the material misstatement identified (which you have to actually count and identify, it may not be given, you have to spot it yourself), what balance sheet objective/assertion is relevant to the question (not given again), and what audit procedure would satisfy the relevant balance sheet objective. It's like, you studied so hard about cut-off procedures and search for unrecorded liabilities, but when it comes test time, a bunch of answer selections will look equally applicable, so you have to think really hard about what train of thought they are really asking for you to think about. As well as a lot of the multiple choice – many answer choices will look equally correct, and it's like 50/50 you just pick an answer – you should just stick with your first answer. They key for m/c is to work quickly and not get stuck on one question. If you can't answer it right away, mark it and move on. Get thru the whole testlet and then go back and try to answer ones marked. If you still can't answer it, narrow it down to 50/50 and just basically go with your first answer you thought, and get to the sims as fast as possible. The time was the most difficult. If I had an extra 30 minutes to do the one sim I skipped (analytical procedure), I would feel better about my score. The analytical procedure sims definitely take the longest, and were also taking me like 30 minutes to do one sim on the Becker practice exams. The ones on the real exam will be even longer than the ones on the Becker mock exams. So be prepared to read thru a lot of s*it. Good thing is, you'll get like 1 or 2 shorter sims to offset the longer ones, and research is quick too. So they're not all equally long. Like if you expected to allocate 45 mins to 3 sims,it might look like 25 mins on one, and then 10 mins on the other 2. On my past few Reg exams and even Aud this time, the pre-test and hardest sims came in the 3rd or 4th testlet. It always throws me for a loop and I waste 30 mins on it every time. I spent 30 mins on one, and am thinking now it was a pre-test sim because nothing made sense. It was like every balance sheet and expense balance was wrong, nothing reconciled or made sense, ratios were like upside down – when they were supposed to increase, they decreased, and when they were suppose to decrease, they increased. So if you see something funky and weird like that, it's probably a pre-test and if you catch yourself spending more than 20 mins on it, you should just move on and guess on it cause you need all the time for the other sims. The other hardest part is, all the sim answers are tricky. The shorter sims, if there are only 4 answer boxes, each one will be really tricky even if there's no documents to pop up and open. So the new sim formats – basically had I done a lot more sims from each chapter and seen more of the answers, I'd probably have worked through them faster. So key is to be familiar with as many of the sims as possible from Becker from each chapter – there's like 27 from modules 3 and 4 – I'd look through all of them. Looking through all the different sims so you are familiar with what sim could show up on the exam was is really helpful. They are nothing even like the sample AICPA audit sims. Those were slightly easier compared to what I just sat for. It's like one level more difficult than those sims. I didn't feel confident with most of my answer choices on the sims, that's what worried me. So practice practice practice as many sims as you can, you can't wing it like old exams. You'll actually have to do a few sims from each chapter, cause the new sims will come at you at a different angle than you're used to.
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