[Anonymous]

Just wanted to make this post for anyone thinking they don’t have a shot because they didn’t go through the sims for one reason or another,

for all three parts, I didn’t practice sims and ended with passing grades. Granted they were not in the 90s, but still enough to pass.

My strategy was to review CPAExcel materials, do the MCQ after each section (did not watch lectures, just read book), and then use Jeff’s most given advice –> do MCQ religiously.

I’m not saying sims are useless, since they help you gain a better understanding. However, if you’re tight on time, forget the sims, and focus on MCQ !!

Good luck to all

[juuustin]

Lion and mla:

You mistook my meaning. I was just saying that blind luck is the only factor in getting exactly a 75. Trust me, I realize it doesn't take intelligence to pass when I see the people who needed 20 sittings….

MD Candidate: 10/1/14

FAR - 87 (11/23/14)
REG - 87 (1/30/15)
BEC - 89 (4/19/15)
AUD - 98 (5/30/15)

Ethics - 100

Experience - In Progress!

[mla1169]

Juustin who cares how many sittings? I've seen people pass all 4 the first time that can't even string together a coherent sentence. I hope you pass all 4 the first time, truly. But you don't know why people get the scores they do, so don't assume anything. My 47 in AUD? That was on my lunch break from work because it was month end and I was told if I wasn't back by 2pm not to bother coming back. Actually I'm pretty impressed that I scored that high in the 65 minutes I was there! Not at all an indication of my intelligence I kept up a schedule for 12 months that not a single person here could have pulled off.

FAR- 77
AUD -49, 71, 84
REG -56,75!
BEC -75

Massachusetts CPA (non reporting) since 3/12.

[Anonymous]

Practicing SIMs is not necessary. Knowing the material is. If practicing the SIMs helps you with that, then by all means go for it, but to think that it's necessary to learn the material is wrong. I passed all 4 exams on the first try – if I remember right, my scores ranged from 79-91, which is quite OK with me. I practiced maybe 5 SIMs for all the exams, and those were probably all on FAR just to see what they were like since it was my first exam with SIMs (probably looked at around 5 sample BEC writing prompts as well). For me, practicing SIMs was not an efficient way to study.

So, I think the OP's point is valid – practicing SIMs is not required to learn the material or to pass. However, points like mla's are valid, too, that she learned via the SIMs so for her, practicing them is useful.

The key is to learn what is your best personal study strategy. Given that most posts on here stress practicing SIMs, I think it was useful for the OP to post this and let people know that successful study strategies don't have to include SIMs, so that people would feel safer in doing what they know works best for them. (I stressed over the fact that I hadn't been able to practice SIMs for FAR because even though I didn't feel like I was learning from them, everyone said I needed to practice them; it would've been helpful for me to see a thread like this and realize that I could trust what I knew of my own learning style and abandon them.)

Oh, and for what it's worth, at the time I wasn't making lots of JEs for my job. I did bookkeeping in a QuickBooks-related program where most entries had the offsetting entry entered automatically by the system. So, I didn't have extensive JE experience – just learned in a method that didn't require it.

[marti1nd]

@jussstin – I agree, sometimes I wish the exam was more about hard work AND smarts than just hard work. I don't think simply sitting a hundred times is going to protect the public…I'd guess that the AICPA feels the same way as well which is ah the exam is changing in 2017.

BEC: 10/2013 71
AUD: 12/2013 75
BEC: 02/2014 89
REG: 05/2014 86
FAR: 11/2014 81

[mla1169]

I'd be curious to know how exactly the number of sittings correlates to public protection? Because you are a good test taker who can knock out all 4 the first time doesn't exactly correlate to real world abilities especially when such a minimal amount of the material is retained. I mean almost none is retained. Don't believe me? Go back and take a sample test a month or year after passing.

And nowhere in the 2017 changes will you find capping the number of attempts. For the life of me I can't figure out why people come to a site called ‘another 71″ to criticize people who needed multiple attempts to pass. Go find the “perfection is the only option” message board. Oh, wait….

FAR- 77
AUD -49, 71, 84
REG -56,75!
BEC -75

Massachusetts CPA (non reporting) since 3/12.

[tomq04]

I know of a hundred dozen women willing to go by the name of Sim if that meant Bill Braskey would give them some attention.

REG- (1) 76
FAR- (2) 64, (5)74, (7)83 (Over achiever!)
AUD- (3) 70, (4) 75
BEC- (6) 75

[Martin]

marti1nd, why would you want this exam to be any harder? Dont you think it would have taken you a lot longer than 16 months if it was more challenging?

Through God all things can happen!

“You never fail until you stop trying.”
― Albert Einstein
When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people;as I grow older, I admire kind people.
“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

FAR= 72-84
Audit= 73-82
BEC= 74-75
Reg=77

[marti1nd]

@mla – I'm curious to know where I criticized anyone or said I was perfect.

BEC: 10/2013 71
AUD: 12/2013 75
BEC: 02/2014 89
REG: 05/2014 86
FAR: 11/2014 81

[confusedcandidate]

Practicing the Sims is important so you know the format, inputs, and style of the questions. For example, many sims require you to put your answers in ascending or descending order (highest dollar amount first, etc). The first time I did a review question like that I bombed it because my answers weren't in order, even though all of my answers were technically correct. Now I know to read the question very carefully. I also practiced a FIFO/LIFO question where you had to calculate each lot and their amounts. There were probably 100 cells requiring inputs. Even though I know how to do inventory problems I wasn't quite sure how to input my answers and got an abysmal score on that sim. Now I know how to input that too so if I see it on my test I'll be fine.

Practice your sims.

Weekends are meaningless to a CPA candidate

[lexisavannah]

I didn't practice sims at all for REG because I kept hearing that it was useless because of the randomness of REG sims. However, when I studied AUD I had a coworker advise me to pay attention to those practice sims and that paid off for sure. I had at least three of the sims on my actual exam that I had practiced – obviously not the exact question but the same topic demonstrated the same way. I did terribly on them when I did them as practice and I didn't feel great about them when it came to doing them on the exam, but there were little nuances that I remembered from getting them wrong the first time. I would not write off practicing sims altogether.

BEC 7/3/14 - 79
FAR 8/30/14 - 64, 85 (used Becker and Ninja MCQ)
AUD 10/3/14 - 82
REG 11/25/14 - 85

[juuustin]

I am more than happy to agree to disagree on this. What works for some does not work for others, and that is fine. I preferred to not do SIMS and it worked out on FAR. I think I avoided them so much because they were incredibly tedious. The Becker REG sims don't seem to be as tedious so far so I will probably do them.

MD Candidate: 10/1/14

FAR - 87 (11/23/14)
REG - 87 (1/30/15)
BEC - 89 (4/19/15)
AUD - 98 (5/30/15)

Ethics - 100

Experience - In Progress!

[M.O.D.]

@ justin,

No, please don't practice any Sims. We need you to avoid Sims, for our controlled experiment to prove the validity of this thread, that “Yes, you can pass without practicing Sims”

BA Mathematics, UC Berkeley
Certificates in CPA and EA preparation, College of San Mateo
CMA I 420, II 470
FAR 91, AUD Feb 2015 (Gleim self-study)

[EverybodyswaitingfortheCPA]

I'm not sure not practicing SIMs is the same thing as not doing them during the test. It sounds like you many think that if one does not practice SIMs, he or she will not get any credit on the SIMs…. 😐

I think we can all agree that everyone's learning style is different, so find out what works for you and stick with it. It's good to hear the advice of others, but it not always appropriate for one's circumstances or learning style.

BEC - ✔ REG - ✔ AUD - ✔ FAR - ✔

Becker + NINJA MQCs for FAR

Licensed January 2015

[Anonymous]

The Sims are just application of the the concepts. If you already know how to apply the concepts, then you don't really need to practice the SIMS. MCQs are more important. I didn't need to practice writing normal journal entries, however, I did like to write out t-accounts for visual purposes.

The only test I really reviewed Sims for was audit, so that I could get a visual and understanding of what things like bank transfers and tickmark questions looked like.

[M.O.D.]

Whoa, one experiment at a time. First we need to figure out if you can pass without practicing Sims prior to the test, then we'll experiment if you can can pass without doing any on the test itself.

Once we isolate the Sims component we'll move on to the MCQ component, and we'll run similar, controlled experiments. We CPAs are not known as data analysis experts for nothing.

BA Mathematics, UC Berkeley
Certificates in CPA and EA preparation, College of San Mateo
CMA I 420, II 470
FAR 91, AUD Feb 2015 (Gleim self-study)

[Author]

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