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I just recently got my exam score back from BEC, which I took on August 6th, 2014 and received the score on August the 26th. The earliest I was to receive the score was August 22nd. I lived with more psychological angst from the August 22nd-26th than most of my adult life. Like all the majority of the posters here, I received a failing score, not just a failing score – which I could understand, but a seventy-muth-fning-four, 74! I am still shocked and until several hours ago, I was debating on whether I should institute a regrading or an appeal. Well, after thoroughly reviewing both options, I decided they were both not financially practicable. Who has $200 to spend on regrading, besides, how do you even know if the AICPA regrades the exam, they probably do not, it probably is not even possible considering the AICPAs “magical” grading methodologies cannot be repeated. An appeal is the way to go – if you have the time and money to travel to Nashville, Tennessee and sit down with a AICPA representative. The cost is $500 up front and $100 per question/simulation chosen for an appeal. Oh, you also have to pay to fly, rent a car, stay somewhere, food, and other miscellaneous expenses. I calculated it would cost me around $5,000 to appeal the exam broken down as follows: initial $500 up front cost, approximately 30 multiple choice questions and 3 simulations at $100 per item – $3,300, traveling expenses $1,200.00! Not to mention, I would have to skip going on a ski vacation or cruise, just to meet the devil incarnate rep of the AICPA tasked with deceiving me even more. The real problem is that I cannot remember the specific question numbers and which tests contained those questions! I can only remember the gist of the questions. You have to tell them which testiest and question number you want to appeal, it cannot be a request for all failed questions, you have to choose which question you think you failed. I studied my ass off and deserved a passing score, but I received the highest failing score possible. My dad is a CPA and several years ago decided to make it my life to become one as well. I have earned a MAFM and a MBA in Finance, took the Becker CPA review and studied independently. I did not like the exam and I thought it skipped material that was covered heavily and more important to the CPA’s understanding of the business environment. Yet, the exam managed to have those non-review material questions riddled with ambiguity to the point of no answer definitely being correct or others being incorrect. In my opinion, that is why the CPA exam is difficult, ambiguity. The questions are written to force the answerer to make assumptions and subsequently, errors. You might be thinking what is my point. My point is something shady is going on at the AICPA!
Why would the AICPA allow appeals but at prohibitively higher costs? The answer – no one studying for the CPA exam has tens of thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer and institute and appeal. You would be crazy to pay those cheats to cheat you again! Why are question so ambiguous and secretive? Is it not the exact same material with the exception of minor alterations for updates in accounting rules that has been around for decades. My dad’s accounting textbooks were not to different from my mine, except for color, pictures, diagrams and costs. Even if an appeal is instituted, how would you prove that the question was worded, stated, answered, and had the same potential answers as presented in the actual exam? You have no way to prove anything because you cannot bring anything in to the “high-security” test center but nervousness and hopefulness. I just loved being re-fingerprinted to leave the room, which was practically empty, as if someone was pretending to be me taking a break to use the bathroom for me! It took almost ten minutes, roundtrip, for the lady to get my fingerprint matched and for her to “accept” my signature – and that was without a line, god forbid other people are in line waiting to be screwed over by some Pro-metric employee pretending she cannot scan your fingerprint to keep your testing time marginalized for job security purposes.
On top of all this the AICPA can do the following to you: if you pass the first test let with a good score, then you will get a harder test let worth more on a per question basis. If you do well again, the you get an even harder exam worth even more on a question by question basis. The best scores are automatically placed into the upper bell curve of the “rounding.” For those who perform poorly on the first test let, you are given an easier test-let, which is worth less on a per question basis. If you do bad again, it is an even easier exam, worth even less on per question basis. If the AICPA knows how well you did practically instantaneously to decide if you receive a more or less difficult test let, then why does it take 20+ days to received your final scores? It takes about 3 weeks because your scores and compared to all others taking the exam at that time and every question is graded psychometrically. Psychometrics is fancy way of “curving.” The highest score sets the top upper end of the curve and all other scores are scored downward. Just like an Organic Chemistry exam where the highest score of 52 out of 100 is an A+. If everyone does good and you do good, it is an average good. If you do good and everyone does bad, it is an above average good. If you do bad and everyone else does good, than it is a below average bad. It takes time to see who scored the highest from that testing period, what questions they were asked, what question they are going to decide to de-credit by saying they are only experimental questions to be used in future exams, which questions are only worth .5 instead of 2.0 because of difficulty – set by the percentage of correct and incorrect responses during that testing period, normalizing the pass-fail ratio, etc. Basically, there are so many legitimate ways for the AICPA to fail you, that you could pass with a super high score and end up with a failing grade because of after the fact “magical” scoring. All of which explains the approximate pass-fail ratio which only varies by very little from quarter to quarter on each exam, approximately 50-50. I found some of the other posts interesting that stated their beliefs in being failed for taking the test too late in the window, after a standard number of passing scores have already been achieved. If your a below average passing score, 75-84, then you might find your score curved to a 64-74. Bottom line – I believe that I passed and was denied a passing grade because of the “magical” scoring.
If you do not think the AICPA denies passing grades even though you passed then you really should not be entering the field of accounting. Do you know that there are approximately 650,000 CPA’s in America for almost 330,000,000 Americans? Why are there so few CPA’s? The AICPA does not want 3 million CPA’s out there decreasing the scarcity of CPA’s, their exceptionally high wages and job security. Sure, not everyone needs a CPA, but 8% of Americans are millionaires, approximately 27,000,000 and countless businesses need hoards of CPAs merely to function day to day. The CPA credential is harder to attain than any other license and practically no one can deny that fact. I can remember meeting a lawyer at the first accounting firm I worked for years ago who was licensed to practice law in over ten states but would say outright that he could not pass the CPA exam to save his life. I never understood why, but now I know why.
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