[D]

I took FAR in December and it was a miserable fail (work demands shifted, so I only got about 2 weeks of quality study time outside of work… so I recognize it was my fault :/)

I take FAR in 17 days, and currently I’m trending about 64% in NINJA MCQ. (and I’ve only done about 10% of the MCQs). I’ve gone through the whole book and NINJA notes once though. ~60% feels REALLY low to be trending 17 days out.

Fortunately I have a good amount of time to commit to studying now (work+commute time has stabilized to M-F 7a-5p so I plan to study in the evenings and on weekends and hit the MCQs HARD!).

Trying to get an idea of whether I’m way off from where I need to be, and/or need to reschedule my test? Or, if there are others who were ~2.5 weeks out and were able to bring up their trending score and pass? It feels like its taking longer for me to “get” this material than BEC and AUD, although I’m guessing I’m not the only one since FAR is known beast…

Advice/thoughts appreciated!

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AUD - 74, 77! (1/2016)
BEC - 80! (5/2016)
REG - tbd (8/2016)
FAR - tbd

Study materials: NINJA MCQ/Audio/Notes

"I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me!"
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[sallybreann]

I don’t have a FAR score to back up my advice to you (will get my score Feb 7th) I went all the way through Becker and then I did Ninja MCQ’s the last 3 weeks and never got above a 70% trending however I never made it through all of the questions in NINJA. Every single question I was doing was brand new to me and there is a thread on here that has people’s NINJA trending score vs. actual score on the exam and while many had 80% trending, many more were trending around 68-70% as well and passed easily.
Ask yourself if you can keep momentum and not lose steam if you push the test back a few weeks. 17 days is a long time to be studying full force without losing stamina, I pushed my exam back a week and regret it because I out of steam by that last week and having a hard time mustering the energy to study any more. I’m sure its very possible for you to pass the exam in 17 days but it’s about knowing yourself and how many MCQ’s you can do in a day. I had a hard time doing more than 100 MCQ’s a day for FAR material because it’s just all really intense.
Again, I don’t have a pass to back up any advice I’m giving you, but I just took the exam and worked really hard leading up to it. (9 weeks of study – first 4 weeks was figuring how the heck to study for these things and not knowing what I was doing haha) When I took the exam I found the MCQ’s do able because of all the NINJA mcq’s I had done leading up to it. My SIMS were a whole other story, it’s the luck of the draw I guess. I wish you the best in your studies and hope it works out for you.

[ipadminihalf]

I took FAR in August (Score 63) and November 2016 (Score 82). I think your score is pretty low for having the test in 17 days. For me, I don't think I could study for 17 days effectively, even if I wanted to. I have effective and ineffective days of studying. For my second time studying FAR, I first wrote notecards on one chapter, and then did the questions for it, through all the chapters, except a few where I only did about half the questions (pension, deferred taxes). Overall score first time through was 73%, then I went back and did all the questions I got wrong moving the total percentage up to 93%. After this, I started doing quizzes with 5 chapters at a time (31 total chapters in RogerCPA Review). I continued to do this and threw a few simulations into the quizzes. I did not practice simulations that much, maybe about 2-3 hours before the exam, but for the MCQ, I typically wrote out entire journal entries and did more work than necessary for the answer, to practice calculating other figures that were not asked for in the question. Also, for my second attempt, I pushed my test back 3 weeks for additional study time. The issue with FAR is that there is so much material, it is hard to get to all of it in a short amount of time, unless you can be super motivated and focused.

REG - 2/19/16 - 77!
BEC - 4/16/16 - 79!!
AUD - 6/04/16 - 84!!!
FAR - 8/31/16

[Anonymous]

Looks like you have already knocked out AUD and BEC, which is good because those exams are changing so much.
I don't think trending scores on Ninja or other review programs are good indicators of how well you'll do.
People place way too much emphasis on those and ultimately, they usually come out better on the actual exam.
There are some topics that you have to know absolutely cold, like the back of your hand – I was in the same position
you were, with work getting in the way, but I totally burned out after 3 months of studying. There were 2 months
between the time I finished studying and the time I took the exam. And in that time, there were things I forgot.
As others have said, there is a volumnious amount of stuff you have to know for FAR and it's hard to keep it all
at the front of your brain. Interestingly, today I was shopping and ran into one of my old classmates.
I hadn't seen him for two years or so. I asked him how he was doing with the CPA exams and he said he was still
working on them, much to my surprise. And, this guy is a real whiz with numbers. But, I think work got in the way for him
as well. I don't know how truly ready anyone can be for FAR. I think it's just one of those that you have to keep
working at until you finally get the 75+. I took a good 100 pages of notes on FAR topics that I was simply too burned out to re-read before taking the exam. But, after I took it, I knew every area that I was weak in. So, assuming I have to take it again, I will be studying those again. Flash cards were never my thing. And, there are far too many topics to prepare them for in FAR I think. What *is* important is going back over the MCQs and SIMs and understanding what you did wrong on them. I'm using Roger review – some say his MCQ are a joke and his SIMs are weak/insufficient but I found that to be wrong.
They were almost exactly like the ones I got on the actual exam and I was not prepared for that. Not sure if you're just on Ninja or if you had another review course as well but my advice would be just that – *go back over the questions again and again.*

[Author]

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