[nvm5223]

Took BEC earlier today. First time taking BEC so I have no real comparisons between the old and new exam format. The only thing I can tell you guys is to definitely know your IT. I feel the consensus with the old exam was the IT and Goverance approach and it hasn’t changed.

The simulations weren’t bad. 4 in total. 2 were somewhat difficult and 2 were doable. Definitely know cost accounting and finance.

GENERAL TIP: You’re going to see some questions that you haven’t even remotely seen in your life. Just breathe, relax, and look at the actual answers they provide you and choose the one that actually makes sense. Believe it or not, compared to the questions in Becker, the questions and answers they actually provide you on the test is less difficult than do on then bexker. Usually, one answer will just stick out.

[Tncincy]

@chasincpa good luck to you, fingers crossed for the rest of us.

It begins with a 75
Been here too long as a cheerleader....ready to pass

[cpa1982]

betovich,

I saw similar memo in my BEC exam. I found it odd since I haven't study FAR yet. Had no clue what to write.

[nvm5223]

@Betovich If I had to bet, that's definitelt a pretest WC. In general, the WC are definitely BEC related and they can be FAR related. I took FAR prior to taking BEC and there's some topics that correlate off one another.

Remember, a good portion of the grading for the WC is just the actual structure of your responses and inserting some buzz words. If you actually get something like that on the exam, just know that it's probably a pretest and set up the WC like if it were a BEC related one. You might have to Bullsh** it more because you don't have that much knowledge of the topic but that's what you gotta do.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Hey guys,

I took BEC today and wanted to share my experience without crossing any pesky disclosure guidelines. I previously took it back in January and failed with a 72 because I ran out of time and didn't get to the written communication. I know, it seems like I'm the only person this has ever happened to. I've always struggled with time management. Anyways, I do have something to compare the new format to and with that being said….

I'm definitely frustrated with today's exam. I am not even going to try to predict a pass or fail as I've learned that I'm usually on the other end of my prediction when I do that. All I can say is that I wish I had supplemented more study material in with Becker. I know I can't discuss specifics of the weighting that I saw on my exam, but I will say that I definitely think the AICPA BEC blueprint is wildly inaccurate for the weighting of testing areas. Not only that, but the IT questions were coming out of absolutely nowhere. I think at one point I had six of them in a row. Becker did not do a very good job at covering these areas either. I thought maybe I just didn't know these areas as well as I thought I did. However, I went back and went through my book page by page after the exam and didn't see a lot of the questions covered anywhere.

The SIMs seemed to be more manageable. They were what I was expecting based off of the previous examples I had seen throughout Becker. And on top of that, I ACTUALLY left myself enough time for the written communication this time. Needless to say, I finished feeling much more positive than when I started.

With all that being said, my suggestion would be to supplement your study material. I studied with Becker which is supposed to be the best of the best and I feel like they missed a lot of material that I was tested on. I think this just goes to show that no study material is perfect. And I by no means am I suggesting you go out and purchase Becker, Wiley, Gleim, and Ninja just to get exposure to different areas. But even just purchasing the Ninja MCQ (like $40 or something?) to bridge the gap of material that your study program may not be covering could be really beneficial come exam day.

Like I said, everyone's exam is entirely different so take all this with a grain of salt. Good luck everyone. August isn't so far away, right?!

[nvm5223]

Hey @brady

The best sentence I got out of your passage was “the sims seemed to be more manageable” It seems like you passed and got the the most of it brother.

Hopefully you destroyed that test. Those IT questions do come out of left field like a fly ball right in the sun. It seems like you killed tho brother.

[josh nathanson]

@brady707 Did you buy the MCQ for Ninja? If you did, did doing the 330 pratice IT questions help out at all??

[Nutcracker2016]

I request all candidates who took BEC this quarter to mail AICPA about the IT questions you saw ASAP. I didn’t take the exam this quarter yet but took in NOV 16 and Jan17. The only solution to stop seeing IT questions from nowhere is to mail AICPA and tell them you sat for BEC exam this quarter and this is YOUR exam experience and not anybody else.
Just some extra notes here. NASBA just administer CPA exams. They don’t control any exam content we see. I spoke to persons in NASBA. Your state board also will not be of great help. The only persons who can even answer our questions is AICPA examination board. Their mail ID is service@aicpa.org. Mention in the subject question about exam content, so that, it will directly go to the examination committee.
One benefit from this is, if most people take BEC this quarter mails them they may consider having a more lenient stand towards scoring. Thanks.

[Nutcracker2016]

Ok. After so many emails and calls to NASBA, State board and AICPA, today I finally got a mail from AICPA that they will forward the case to the appropriate examination committee member. I clearly mentioned I have experienced the difficulty I encountered on my past BEC exams IT sections in Nov and Jan17.
But, to my luck the second time I took, my score report says Stronger in IT and weaker in cost accounting. I seriously don’t know how this happened. I guessed most of my IT and did very well on cost accounting questions. Everyone, is human and make mistakes. But NASBA is not going to admit it. I say can say for sure because I am the one who wrote these two exams.
I will still strongly suggest people who took your BEC exam so far, and seen IT questions which is not from your review material, to email AICPA. Please do this and help us all for a possible better scoring.

[Anonymous]

I m just quoting what another guy said about his exam and was wondering if there are DRS as well?

“This was my second attempt
Scored 74 for the first time. Majority of mcq questions were on IT. Maybe 30 out of 62.
Simulations were tough ,lots of documents to go through but i guess they were doable expect one.

[reneef79]

I took the new BEC exam this past weekend.

I failed BEC several times prior to this past weekend scoring a 74 on November's exam.

I am not good with MCQs, specifically those on the CPA exam, because the questions are not worded in proper English. Several of the questions use passive instead of active voice, which makes them confusing. For that reason, I was excited to take BEC in the new format.

Like many others, I thought the exam contained more IT questions than the outlines that show how much of each topic is covered on the exam. Fortunately, most of the IT nonsense was drastically reduced in the second testlet, which in my opinion, focused more on the other BEC topics.

The TBS sections were not nearly as challenging as I thought they would be. I used Ninja MCQs and think that the material should be updated to include the format of the TBS questions. However, if you know the BEC material you should be okay. The WC questions were easy and straightforward.

I felt better about this exam than any of the other times I took it. In fact, I had 54 minutes remaining after completing the whole exam. However, I am worried that my confidence level may be too high and would hate to get disappointed again when the scores are released in August.

[Jas]

I took BEC this past Thursday, and it was heavy on IT. I even saw a lot of the IT questions were on material that wasn't included in the 3.1 version of the BEC textbook. I noticed the same thing with the practice tests. It made me uneasy. I noticed others in this thread had the same issues. Have any of you heard back from NASBA or AICPA? Can you all point me in the right direction to who I should contact about this to help us all?

[Author]

Replies