[momto5]

@ Home Stretch “Also, I changed my approach for Auditing which I regret. I don’t think I will ever take notes again.’

Please explain……I am studying for AUD now using Becker. I took lots of notes for FAR and decided to do the same for AUD, but I am finding that it is taking me so very long and wondering if it is helping me any. What would you do differently?

FAR - 92 (4/27/12)
AUD - 96 (7/17/12)
BEC - 92 (8/30/12)
REG - 91 (11/12/12)

[Anonymous]

Oh my! I just saw this post.

First I want to explain my back ground. I have taken accounting, and taxation , and economic courses. But only to get a strong foundation for these exams. So I had no textbook or prior knowledge of Auditing. Additionally, I gave myself only 3 weeks to study for Audit.

So the one reason I regret taking notes was, instead of pure listening, I wrote it down. While I learned the material, I am sure that it did not help to reinforce the material any better. Especially since I fared well in BEC and FAR without taking notes. Additionally, I did NOT rewrite, or take a look again at my notes. That to me, is the main reason why you want to take notes in the first place. I found out that I am the guy who does much much better rewatching the lectures twice. And this was a new approach I figured I should try out since I had no foundation. + my friend did it for his series 7 exam and he passed( I feel stupid now.)

It didn't work out for me. It was too time consuming to spend two days on 3 hours of videos alone. I did much better just plowing through the lectures, and reinforcing it with mcq. I think it was Jenuno who suggested taking notes for missed MCQs which was what that person did. I misread her post and thought she took notes on the lectures. I had done something similar, which is NOT the same thing as taking notes on the lectures in my opinion. It is much better.

I don't know, does writing notes help you remember it better? I can for sure say for myself, that it didn't.

Are you going to review it more than two times? I didn't even review it once and so it was somewhat of a waste. I am sure I failed it so maybe next time I will use it. Also I guess I learned something about myself.(so maybe it wasn't a waste?)

Also I used becker, and tim gearty mentioned a lot of extraneous information ie the environment that incentivizes fraud. pressure, reasoning and one other thing I forget. And I think I wrote it down one too many times and it was never on an mcq. Things like that made me wish I hadn't taken notes.

How do you feel about your note taking. And what program are you using? If you are using becker, I would gladly give you the notes I took for chapters 3 and 4. As I did it on microsoft word, after I spilled soda on my first two chapters =( (one reason I switched to word)

Also, how long is it taking you to write these notes? Would it be time better spent elsewhere? etc.

[Anonymous]

I just saw you are using Becker. You did so well in FAR. It definitely worked out for you. You should probably just keep it the same. Sorry the above post is a bit long. So you can just take my experience with a grain of salt< can I say that?

[Anonymous]

I also want to point out, vouching and tracing IS NOT the same on the mcq as it is when gearty explains it.

He also goes over COVERU way too much. And I took notes for EACH COVER U on the transaction cycle. When you go do the mcq's, you will see that these questions are extremely intuitive and easy.

I had the idea, that the real auditing exam would test us on which assertion doesn't apply to a certain transaction cycle. The AICPA is evil, but not that evil.

[momto5]

Thank you so much for responding. When I began with FAR, I wasn't quite sure how to approach it all, so I initially took limited notes only on major things I thought I should go back to later. As I got further into the book, I started taking more and more notes because I realized it helped me to internalize things. There are lots of calculations in FAR, and it also helped me to do the calculations on paper. At the end I actually went back and retook notes for the first few chapters to help me review better. I wanted to rewrite all of my notes as was suggested, but just didn't have the time and felt like going through more MCQs and practice exams would be more beneficial with the time I had left.

So with AUD I first listened to all the lectures and did the MCQs of chapter 1, and then started writing notes and flashcards. The notes took me the better part of a whole day just for Chapter 1!! I probably went a little overboard on the note taking and realized that I don't want to use that much time for all these notes. I really like the idea about taking notes on the MCQs that you miss, as it seems the questions have been more intuitive, as you said.

It appears that you are probably an auditory learner, which is why you get more out of listening. I am definitely a visual learner and have to see it as well as writing it down to internalize it. Even typing the information into Word is not as helpful as actually writing it, so I don't think I can get away from notes altogether. But I need to find a way to generalize them more, particularly if I find that I am getting most of the MCQs correct the first time.

Can't believe you only studied 3 weeks for AUD – do you have a job also, or could you commit full days to studying? I am taking a prep class that requires we complete one chapter per week, plus I like to leave 2 weeks to review before the exam, so that takes me 8 weeks with a full-time job. Good luck to you! Hope that fact that it is somewhat intuitive helped you pass! And thanks for all the tips!

FAR - 92 (4/27/12)
AUD - 96 (7/17/12)
BEC - 92 (8/30/12)
REG - 91 (11/12/12)

[Anonymous]

@HomeStretch, You passed FAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Congratulations 🙂 So happy for you!

[Anonymous]

Thank you EEL, How was your BEC?

To mom, I study full time. So 3 weeks is just pushing it. Being depressed for FAR made it harder to study too. ahaha.

[Author]

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