[nika_cpa]

I am just struggling with these 2 chapters………..how should I attack them? Variances? I just don’t get them…..I prefer any other section of CPA exam but BEC! BEC is total crap! Please help!!!!

Becker self-study, Wiley Test Bank and books, Becker final review. NINJA MCQ bank and NINJA notes for BEC only!

AUD - PASSED!
FAR - PASSED!
REG - PASSED!
BEC - PASSED!

[Mjganier]

I'm not sure which topics those cover since I used CPAexcel but, I also had a lot of trouble with BEC. It wasn't until I forced myself to begin memorizing formulas that it started to click. Variances I think can be very easy once you know which formula to use. Take efficiency variance for example. You're trying to figure out how efficient the materials and labor was. So its the budgeted materials/hours minus the actual materials/hours used. Then multiplied by the standard price/rate. For price/rate variance it's swapped since you want to find the difference between budgeted price/rate and the actual price/rate incurred Then multiplied by the actual quantity/hours used. I remembered which one to multiply by making this correlatio. Efficiency variances multiply by the standard, price/rate multiplies by the actual. I hope that helps a bit? Anyway, I do greatly suggest writing and rewriting the formulas or making flashcards of them. Half the battle is won once you know which formula to use.

FAR 8/18/2014--87
AUD 10/18/2014--78
REG 11/24/2014--76
BEC 2/28/2015--76

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"-Albert Einstein

Study Mats: Cpaexcel study text and EQ, Ninja MCQ, Ninja notes

[Anonymous]

Variances aren't fun but that DADS PURE mnemonic really helped me once you understand it.

[Anonymous]

I hated chapters 2 & 3. If it makes you feel better, once you get through them, the rest of the material is a breeze.

My strategy for chapters 2 & 3 were to struggle through the multiple choice questions (all of them). It took forever the first time. Then after I finished the whole book, I went back to chapters 2 &3 and re-read the material and reworked all of the multiple choice. I think simply practicing MCQ's is what finally made the material sink in for me.

[mkrohmer]

I struggled heavily with variances, they just didn't make any sense to me. I didn't do well on the MC and just moved on and looked at the chart that shows all the calculations occasionally. On my final review I sat and read those 5-10 pages for about 2 hours and kept writing out the calculations. At this point something just clicked and I went back to the MCQ and improved dramatically. I would say try not to get discouraged and move on and then come back to them in a week/few weeks. This will hopefully allow you to come in with a fresh mind to approach the topic. Good Luck.

BEC - 83 (1/23/15)
FAR - 80 (4/3/15)
REG - 88 (5/14/15)
AUD - 81 (7/3/15)

[jonm857]

It takes a while to get through the homework for chapters 2 & 3. To compute the answer for a lot of the problems you have to be able to think outside the box, and it's frustrating when you think you have a simple solution to a problem but it turns out the real answer takes up two pages.

:/

B - 81
A - 87
R - 73
F - July 5th

[vk125]

I was having a lot of issues with variances while studying. I though I should just pray that not that many questions show up on the test instead of wasting time and not understanding. Two days before the exam I decided to just redo all the variance problems just in case they showed up. While doing them again and again, they just started to click and I finally understood. Weird!

Glad I got finally understood variances because a couple of questions did show up. I knew I got them correct, which is great because I passed BEC with a 76.

If you have Becker, use the mnemonic:

P D

U A

R D

E S

Remember the mnemonic for the formula and just keep practicing the questions! Before even trying to do them yourself, see how they solve them. Then explain to yourself out loud what they're doing. That's what I did, and it sure did help.

[Author]

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