[Syed]

Dear Friends,
With an MS in Accounting, I have decided to take a crack at the CPA exam, three years after my graduation. Before any of you friends assume that I have been working in the accounting field, let me stop you right there. After graduation, I have not seen anything close to accounting so I would be in a relearning process. I am highly motivated though and have the time to dedicate towards the exam. I would greatly appreciate if any of you friends with experience, would guide me as to how I should approach this and set my goals. While in college, I was more comfortable with GlEIM that we used for a course or two, so I am more inclined towards that for the CPA as well unless I am convinced otherwise here by any of you.
I want to know how much time I need to dedicate to each exam and walk through the process as well. If possible, do point out the level of difficulty from easy to most difficult as I would like to take it easy as opposed to the difficult one and losing confidence should I not succeed. What are the passing scores I should be aiming for? Do these exams have an expiration and if passed, how long do they stay valid for?
Thank you all in anticipation.

[aspencookie]

sooooo…you are “highly motivated and dedicated towards the exam”…..but you want the forum to do all your research for you and present it on a platter…..

[Recked]

LOL, tough love!!
google CPA Candidate Bulletin, that's the place to start your research.
Read it front to back, excellent information that everyone needs to know before starting this process.

[Syed]

Recked,
Thank you for your earlier detailed reply. I am going through the bulletin at the moment. It is indeed very informative. You guided me in the right direction. When I was still in my final term, they were talking about making changes to the CPA exams and there were talks of simulations. How are candidates faring with the change. I was always old school and had to have the feel of a physical book in hand to trigger my learning process. I wonder if the new test format will hurt me.

[Recked]

Yea, I'm not sure what happened to that reply.
I edited to add the link to the bulletin and it disappeared, probably waiting for spam check due to the link.
The SIMs of today are way different than the older SIMs, no more true false or simple drop downs to fill in the info.
I think it tests your knowledge better.
You should check out the AICPA sample exams to get a little taste of the SIMs.
Most review courses had not caught up and adjusted to the SIMs when I took the exams. I found most of the SIMs in the review courses to be dated and geared towards the older SIMs. The AICPA sample is the most accurate representation you will see, but even they are mostly fluff. The actual SIMs are like the samples x6-x10.
_
Protip – request pencil and paper allowance for the exams. If you are old school you will like the paper and pencil much more than the white paper/scratchboards with markers.

[Syed]

Your initial reply for some reason didnt get posted but I received it as a notification. Grateful for your informative and positive responses.

[Author]

Replies