[LenaR]

Can you please share your study method? any supplementary material that boosted your grade? My 2nd attempt at Audit but can’t seem to move up from 70:(

[turo9992000]

I did the Ninja method, 4 weeks. In the first week I read the becker book and took hella notes. The next three weeks I did non stop MCQs. I did becker MCQs in targeted groups to get the concepts and I also did adaptive mcqs on Ninja MCQs. On the last couple days, I did a super quick review on Becker, and tried to do 10-20 questions per topic, and I also did targeted MCQs on ninja on the topics that it said I was weaker on.

I studied 6 days a week. 7pm to around 1130 pm sometimes 1 am if I was feeling good. I would also wake up at 5 am 3 or 4 times a week and do morning MCQs for about an hour and a half before work.

Audit was the exam I most dreaded. I work in tax and have no audit experience other than my college audit class 8 years ago.

[Elisabeth]

I used Yeager for my first try and Yeager/Ninja for my second try. My third attempt was with Wiley and I used cpaforfree to supplement. For my study style, Wiley worked better for me and I used cpaforfree to really nail down some of the more difficult concepts.

[TommyTheCat]

i followed the roger study planner schedule to a t. Jammed out the chapters and then did all the IPQs (equivalent of sims and MCQs), drilled them all and then had about a week left to review and do practice simulated exams.

I would watch his lectures while following along in his textbook, highlighting key concepts. Then as I did the MCQ questions I would take notes in a word doc of any missed questions. I was careful to write the notes in my own words and not just copy and paste the explanation given by the software. I found this made me learn it better.

I spent the final week reviewing that word doc (like 30 pages) of notes and it really helped me fill in the gaps i had.

AUD was and is my weakest subject area, I've only helped with field work on one audit in my life, and i avoid them like the plague. I was dreading this section

good luck to you

[Josh]

It is a numbers game. I took 44 practice exams over 6 weeks and wrote down what I didn't know. Auditing is one of the easiest exams to study for because there are no calculations and, contrary to what other's have been saying, it is not subjective; it's pretty straight forward.

Don't read your book and take notes in the beginning; that is a complete waste of time. PRACTICE EXAMS with Sims should make up 99% of your studying. Every day, take an exam, open up an excel sheet and plot your progress. Once you feel comfortable with the material, go back and read and look for things you didn't know and write them down.

I used Gleim (which was harder than the actual exam) and on their rehearsal exam I got an 83% and then got 77% on the actual exam.

Remember something else: 95% of what you study will not show up on the test. But, make sure you know everything you can to maximize your chances of passing.

[LenaR]

Thank you so much everyone!!

[itooshallpass]

I am DREADING audit. Using Roger but can't seem to get into it. I haven't done many quizzes but will start to hammer them today. UGH.

@Tommy how useful did you find it was to practice Sims & DRS?

[TommyTheCat]

it took me a while to start doing well on the IPQs, I struggled a little bit at first. I think part of it had to do that I have never enjoyed audit/attestation and think a lot of it is just playing with yourself, at least from what ive seen professionally. I had I guess a built-in “this is stupid” filter as I worked through the material at first that I had to overcome.

With all that said i definitely think the practice MCQs were my biggest aid in understanding and retaining the materials and pushing through that mental barrier. The SIMs and DRSs I got on the exam were not really anything I had seen in my roger sims, but they were definitely stuff that I felt familiar with conceptually thanks to having drilled the hell out of rogers IPQ MCQs.

Good luck to you, kick its ass.

[itooshallpass]

Thanks Tommy!

[CS]

I was also having trouble in the first week or two studying for audit, but just keep working through the material, MCQs etc. as frustrating as it seems and it will all come together. I was so frustrated (I used Roger – which, for Audit at least, I can't recommend highly enough) that I was jumping into a Wiley free trial to see how that might play out, but honestly, Roger's lectures and textbook were just easier for me to digest than Wiley and I didn't want to go back to Wiley's style (used it successfully for FAR but want to avoid it if I can).

MCQs were definitely integral in putting the information together for me, best of luck!

[fxbinbin]

thanks for all the sharing, needed it

[Kev]

I studied for about a month and did progress exams in sets of 36. I did about 150 questions a day and did all of the sims multiple times. I took the 1st practice exam 2 weeks before and scored a 70 then the 2nd I scored a 71. Worked on the areas I knew I was having trouble in (audit procedures by cycle) and from there I was able to get a 82 on the actual exam. With AUD be careful when you read the questions and look for key words that triggers the answer.

[Tim]

@Josh

I think you overvalue practice questions and I think the fact you got 83% on practice exam doing material that you admitted is harder while getting 77% on the actual exam goes to show that. It seems like you learned to answer the questions and not learned the actual concepts as well as you could have. I personally find reading and understanding the material before doing any questions to be super valuable. I think many people struggle because they spend too much time plugging away at MCQ's instead of internalizing the concepts.

[Recked]

I spent one week watching the videos to get an overview of the concepts.
The only notes I took were mnemonics, or similar things written on the board.
Spent the next 2 weeks doing MCQs, Cum avg around 75% I think over 1000 MCQ's.
I do the MCQ's in groups of 10 so I can get to the answers as fast as possible.
Doing large blocks of MCQ's without seeing the answers doesn't really help you learn.

[ineedthiscpa45]

I'm scheduled to take Audit 1/27 took BEC for a second time and failed. I'm thinking about moving my audit exam up sooner but i have a couple questions regarding the exam.
1. I see that there's double the amount of TBS as there is in BEC from your experience are they way more intense than in BEC?
2. There's the same IT chapter as in BEC but IT was tested a lot in BEC. My question is should IT be a focal point in preparing for the exam? Or is it one of those topics that's tested infrequently?

I'm using Roger & Ninja as a supplement. Any tips on preparing would be great. Good luck to you all!

[potatohead]

I used only Becker so I would watch the lectures, do the skills practice, do the MCQ, and then the sims at the end of each unit. In audit, it's the little details that will trip you up so you definitely need to put some time into knowing the subtleties. Wording is also very important so make sure you thoroughly and completely read the questions because skimming over a key word can easily result in an incorrect answer choice. Also, I sometimes found that it's a matter of picking “the best” answer which can get quite frustrating, but with doing a lot of MCQ I started to recognize what kind of solution the questions were looking for and was able to understand the material better.

Doing a lot of MCQ was very beneficial for me and I believe it helped tremendously on exam day so I recommend doing a bunch. Definitely go over practice simulations also. I found a few of the TBS I had on my exam were extremely similar in format to some I had with Becker. However, I also got some lengthy DRS that were more challenging than the ones I practiced with so that's probably where I lost my points. Sims are a crapshoot to be honest but definitely get familiar with them.

[Author]

Replies