[Anonymous]

For those that have taken BEC this testing window or in recent windows, did you encounter any problems you thought were unsolvable?

I had 2 that way yesterday. On one of them, I don’t think they gave enough information. I burned about 10 minutes trying to approach the question from different angles. On the other one, I knew the formulas inside and out (they were very basic and also tested in FAR and AUD), but kept getting an answer in thousands when all the answer choices were in the millions.

Did anyone else encounter any problems like this? I’m not saying I’m an expert on those topics and I could very well have been wrong, but at least with the 2nd one I was very sure of what I was doing.

It makes me wonder if the AICPA does this to throw you off, make you burn extra time and kill your confidence? I certainly wouldn’t put it past them.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I have hit those problems……yesterday…..they were called REG SIMS. Sweet fancy MOSES!

[Anonymous]

Ha ha – Sweet Fancy Moses – never heard that expression before! I guess that's what the CPA exam will do to ya 🙂

SIMS seem to always be that way. And from what I've heard the REG ones are the worst!! Not looking forward to those next testing window.

I don't want to start a debate here, but it makes me wonder if the AICPA throws in a whole bunch of questions that aren't graded just to make the exam appear difficult. I thought my FAR exam was extremely difficult, I left a few answers on SIMS blank (but not entire SIMS), and was pretty sure I failed walking out of there. How do you go from feeling like that to passing with an 84?

[Mrs 300]

I am convinced that happened to me on BEC. I frantically started multiplying numbers together to arrive at one of the answers! It was horrible!

REG - 80 (Becker only)
BEC - 76 (Becker only)
AUD - 71, 76 (Becker only)
FAR - 65, 74, 81! (Becker, Wiley Test Bank, Ninja notes & Audio)

CPA Class of 2012 🙂

[Anonymous]

They could've (hopefully) been pretext questions. I got one or 2 like that on my exam too, and I was almost certain they were pretest questions. I teach the subject they were over and know it cold. I think the questions I got just weren't phrased right because some of the answers they had answered a similar but different question. I just put what I thought was the right answer to the other question they could've been asking and moved on. No need to fret about one or two weird questions. Chances are that if they weren't pretest questions, they were rated as difficult questions and you won't be penalized too heavily if you missed them.

[Mom2two]

I am so glad to hear other people say they experienced the same thing! I had two questions like that, that the formula to solve it I have down cold. And I never blame the exam but really felt like in this case, they did not give enough information. I tried attacking it from different angles too and just burned up the time. I was pretty upset when I left there and have never felt like that after an exam.

B: 81 (3X) May 2012
A: 76 (1X) Nov 2011
R: 86 (2X) Feb 2012
F: 64, April 2011, retake 10.01.12 - 75!!!!!!!!!!

[Author]

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