[jeff]

Video: Taking Too Many CPA Exam Notes

HIYA!

Jeff Elliott, CPA (KS) | Another71 | NINJA CPA | NINJA CMA | NINJA CPE

[Anonymous]

I took more than 100 pages of notes for FAR. Guess how many of them I reviewed? Less than 5. The sight of that big stack of notes was just abominable to me, I couldn't face reviewing them all. The only ones I reviewed were on the topic of commercial substance and a few other topics. I took fewer notes for AUD and was actually able to go back over them all (maybe 50-60 pages).
For BEC, I took no notes at all because I didn't think it would help me very much.

I haven't purchased Ninja but I think I may in the future, it depends on how many of these exams I can actually pass using my Roger and Gleim materials. I like to exhaust what I have before buying more of something. The salespeople at Roger and Gleim have encouraged me to buy more of their stuff but I don't think I am going to. It's too expensive.

[jeff]

This is precisely why the “J” in NINJA is “Just re-write your Notes” (had to make the NINJA acronym work somehow 🙂

Highlighting is pointless
Taking Notes is better
Re-writing your notes (and spending a week doing so) is best.

Jeff Elliott, CPA (KS) | Another71 | NINJA CPA | NINJA CMA | NINJA CPE

[Mike J]

For each section, I had between 20 and 26 pages.

I often incorporated solutions to practice MCQs and SIMs that were particularly hard or explained the material better than my notes.

So for a given block of 20 MCQ, I found 4 or 5 questions to incorporate.

I made the notes into PDF files and had them on my phone. During any idle time, I'd rip them out.

It worked well for me.

[Author]

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