BEC Study Group – Q2 2018 - Page 15

@glopooka,

Thanks you too. Yeah I am pretty sure Im getting sick. Hot outside, cold inside doesnt work well for me.

Is Bitcoin and AI/machine learning a topic for this quarter? I've been using Becker for all my sections and Becker doesn't even touch these topics, but I'm reading the content study guides for Roger and Wiley and they include: Bitcoin, Blockchain, AI and machine learning in their study materials. I've also looked at the AICPA blueprint and it doesn't seem to mention these topics as being testable. Anyone know if these topics are testable?

@nkhans (sorry if the tag doesn't work, not sure how to use it) these topics were not on my exam. One other thing I forgot to mention, the checks under the “Analysis” portion of the AICPA blueprints for BEC were pretty representative of my exam's sims.

@nkhans,

I think review companies are just covering bases by providing info on it since the AICPA seems to be shifting to update their IT materials. NINJA Audio also briefly went over blockchain and bitcoin.

Haven't posted much in here but I took BEC this morning and I always appreciate when people post their exam experience so I can see what I'm in for so here goes:

First testlet: Pretty heavy in calculations, which I was very nervous to get on my exam, that being said I didn't think there wasn't anything crazy in the calculations and was able to get through it okay and come up with answers

Second testlet: I honestly could not tell if this testlet got harder or easier (yikes) it was hard to tell the difficulty in relation because the two were just so different. Almost no calculations and tons of IT (I used Becker and others who said it doesn't prepare you well enough with IT were correct)

Third testlet: I thought this set of SIMS were relatively easy but I felt like I was missing something or not thinking enough into them but hopefully thats just some self doubt, don't feel like I got 100% but don't feel like I failed either of them either

Fourth testlet: I thought this set of SIMS was more difficult than the first, the first one wasn't too bad the second one had more math (which is probably why I thought this set was harder) Worse than the first one but nothing ridiculous showed up in the SIMS. Both sets all of the SIMS were relatively short and not too many questions. I repeatedly went over both sets of SIMS because I felt like I was missing something or second guessing what I had done.

Fifth testlet (WC): I didn't think the written communications were too bad, one of them I am unsure if what I answered was exactly what they were looking for and another I got a little stumped at the end but overall I didn't think they were too bad.

I think I finished the exam with around 25-30 minutes left, I made sure to budget my time loosely based on 1.5 minutes per MCQ (what I always do for these exams) and tried to split the remaining time among the last three testlets.

Overall: There weren't any topics I was completely surprised by and I should've taken advice from others to supplement Becker's IT and I think there were 2-3 MCQs that I had absolutely no idea about and had to really guess on and then as mentioned above some SIM issues. Realistically I'm thinking I got around 72-73 but we'll see on score release date.

If you have any questions that don't violate let me know and good luck!

@kahloon,

I'm not sure I didn't really back into many of my answers as I felt like I kind of knew what to do with a lot of them but they were easier than some of the ones that Becker had (especially are compared to the first mock exam). I think there was one calculation MCQ that I completely guessed on and the others I was at least able to feel decent about the answer I got, but you never know with these exams. I was really worried about calculation based questions going in.

This exam is just so many random things thrown together and all things I tend to dislike and I felt like my strongest area (econ) was barely covered