[jeff]

I get asked “I canʼt pass BEC! What should I do?” after every testing window.

You would think that I would get e-mailed about the FAR section of the CPA Exam the most, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

There are several aspects of BEC that are in my opinion a “watered down” version of the CMA exam, which is why it is to your advantage to learn BEC from someone who is certified as both a CPA and CMA like Yaeger instructor Cindy Simpson.

To expand further:

1. When I was studying for BEC after switching to Yaeger, I worked every IT question in the Wiley BEC book the day before the exam and it was fresh in my mind. Not only did I do the questions, but I also read the explanations to the all of the answers.
2. Going into the exam, I knew enough about business structures and monopolies, oligopolies, etc. to be dangerous.
3. With time value of money calculations, you have to know which factor to use depending on if the payments are at the beginning or end of the year. I had those straight in my head and could answer those questions accordingly.
4. There are a couple of cost accounting formulas to memorize and I would recommend memorizing the base formulas and then writing them down on your scratch paper. From there, you can algebraically solve for any variable. There’s no need to memorize every derivative of the base formulas – just the base formulas themselves.
5. After three straight 71s (hence the name for this site) on BEC, I scored an 80 on my next attempt after switching to Yaeger CPA Review. I walked into that exam knowing a lot about IT, a decent amount of Economics and business structures, and enough about financial management and cost accounting to get it done.

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