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I took BEC this weekend. On average, it was fair, but it definitely had its ups and downs. It was my first time taking it, so I’m not familiar with the era before simulations.
As others that took it in Q2 and Q3 have eluded to, the multiple choice seemed to skew toward some topics rather than others. One of the topics I got a lot of questions for wasn’t covered very well by Becker, but that seems to be a complaint of all the review courses.
My first testlet went fairly well. Had to take one or two random guesses and a few educated guesses. Calculations were largely straightforward. And like my experience on the other exams, the questions tended to be more conceptual than computational in comparison to Becker.
The average difficulty of my second testlet was definitely higher than the first. I think there were a couple key differences that made them harder. Some of the calculations were either more obscure or less direct. With conceptual questions, fewer of the answer choices stood out as wrong, making process of elimination more difficult. Overall, just read the questions carefully and I think that gets you half of the way.
I have mixed feelings about the simulations. For the first time, I think the AICPA practice exams actually gave a pretty fair representation of what to expect. Here’s why I’m worried. I think anybody without an accounting degree and above-average set reading comprehension and critical thinking skills could have scored at least a 50% on my set of simulations between making thoughtful guesses and using all the information provided. The other 50% was pretty difficult. So while ordinarily I’d feel good for getting at least 3/4 of the responses correct, I’m concerned the standards would be set pretty high. So we’ll see.
And finally, the written communications. Ugh. They were petty, really. I had one that was reasonable and I think I could have gotten close to full credit on. I luckily reviewed that topic right before my test and knew what kinds of concepts were relevant. I know it’s not graded for correctness, but I’m pretty sure I was also technically accurate on that one.
The other two were just unfair. They asked for extremely specific information that wouldn’t come from general business knowledge and definitely wasn’t covered at all in Becker. I know people say that it’s easy to BS the communications by writing professionally and just using lots of buzzwords and restating what’s in the question. But these question stems were so short that there was little to restate. And even though my response was well-written and concise, I’m fairly certain that I just used the wrong set of buzz words and human or a computer would grade it as off-topic. I’d wager a few bucks that those two responses could earn zero credit. Ah, I guess we’ll see.
General thoughts: I think Becker prepared me well for the exam. If you’re using Becker, it’s easy to get lost in the nitty-gritty of the most complex computations. Just try your best to not lose sight of the big picture.
The Becker mock exams well-represented the actual multiple choice on the exam. But the Becker simulations were much harder. They were also ambiguous.
I’ve seen people post on here concerns about the Becker simulations not being clear about how answers should be formatted, entered, etc. Don’t sweat it. On the CPA exam for all 4 sections, they really clearly spell out how they want answers entered in plain English. For example, “Enter your answers as positive, whole numbers.” “If your answer is zero, enter 0.” “Enter your answer as a percentage rounded to two decimal places.” “Select an answer for each box” vs. “All boxes may not be needed.” There’s no guesswork here.
If you have any questions about my experience, feel free to ask. Obviously won’t divulge specifics! But I’ll try my best to help.
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