[cooperz]

I finished my first FAR exam today and I felt that I was in a time crunch. The MCQs were ok, but the SIMS were lengthy as hell. I was left with 45 mins and 5 SIMS remaining. The last testlet had such lengthy SIMS with so many documents to review and then fill in numbers. Not sure if I’ll pass, but hoping there is a curve since with such lengthy SIMS not sure how people finish their exam.

[Anonymous]

I hammered mcqs like crazy, did a few practice sims but they werent really like the sims on the exam.

[Cruzer]

@wannafree read the thread about benchmarks someone wrote. This is pretty detailed out on time. As far as FAR MCQ, on average each test has 20 computational questions and 46 Application MCQ. Go read @GWS CPA posts. The guy must work for the AICPA with the detail he provided. He explains the difference between a DRS and an Enhanced SIM. I had 1 DRS and 4 Enhanced SIMS, which did not align with his predictions. He also mentions how long each SIM should take based on what is is (DRS, Enhanced SIM, Regular SIM).

[Wannafree]

Thanks Cruizer,it is ultimate.Loved it.Thanks again.

[Anthony]

@Cruzer Have to agree, @GWS CPA must be part of the AICPA or something because he/she post nothing except topics hyping up the new exam.

[Anonymous]

@Cruzer, @Bizzle99, @cooperz, @cmcook, @KarenE I really hope all of you passed FAR.

What does enhanced SIM look like?

I am going to take the exam on Thursday and I have prepared for FAR for months. Now I just am get tired of working on the endless MCQs. English is my second language and my reading speed is not so good. I just got discouraged after reading your guys' feedback on the new test. 🙁

I took a mock test (70 MCQs) from Wiley yesterday. Man, more than half of them were not straight forward calculation question and many of them had description of one to two paragraphs long. I finished them under 108 minutes. I got 89 but I have remembered couple of the them that I did before. It consumed a lot of my brain energy due to all the reading, analysis, and calculation.

My question is: are the real MCQs as lengthy as what I described?

[Anonymous]

81, if I remember correctly my 1st testlet questions werent as lengthy. They seemed pretty straight forward. 2nd testlet wasnt really harder ( as in i felt i didnt get more wrong) but the questions were longer and took me more time to do.

[Elisabeth]

@wannafree – i took far today and my strategy was to only spend between 1 to 1.5 minutes on the mcq, which i was able to do. Going into the sims, i had about 2.75 hours to finish all 8.

@another81 – the mcq's were not lengthy as some of the review qustions in study materials. 90% of mine were really straight-forward calculations.

Good luck to everyone!!

[IwannabeaCPA2017]

@Elisabeth, 1-1.5 min per question? I really hope I can take that time cuz Im using becker and sadly to say 1 question I take average like 5-6 min LOL. Staring at it not even know what to do is just depressing and discouraging.

[Wannafree]

@elisabeth ,thanks ,that's my target.Some problems take much longer than I would like to.I have made a list of 200 questions (mixed ) and tries to revisit those every 2nd day.Trying to put as much as possible in RAM memory rather than Hard Disk.LOL

[cpApex Predator]

Took FAR yesterday, which was my first exam. Doing practice tests and MCQ at home I was averaging one minute per question. Thought I would be able to do that in the exam, but ended up finishing first two testlets in exactly 90 minutes. Didn't have time to review as I felt it was better to let it fly and save time for the SIMS. Finished third testlet in exactly half hour so took a quick break with two hours left exactly. Didn't have much time on the break as they have to do a thorough security check before they let you back in, but they let me get a drink of water and go to the bathroom. Finished the fourth testlet pretty quick and had an hour and fifteen minutes for the last three. Brain was pretty fried on the last two SIMS and the last one was really tough. I left feeling absolutely devastated as it took it all out of me. After I was able to come down a bit I started to remember the questions and feeling better about it. The problems where you have the sentences that you have to correct really weren't that bad. I felt the four or five that Wiley had were comparable. Definitely made some mistakes in retrospect. The wording in the problems can be confusing and vague to where you are unsure what exactly they are asking for. Being the first test, anxiety was really high, which I think effected my ability to think clearly in the moment. Now that the ice is broken the next tests should go smoother. The software worked really well. The calculator in the exam works way better than Wiley's. The laminated paper was good. The backside didn't have grid-lines, which made it easier to write, but they gave me two pens that didn't work and had to get more during the exam, which through my rhythm off a bit….Feel that is all I can say without divulging stuff that I can't.

[Anonymous]

I took my FAR yesterday too. I didn't know how to describe it, good or bad. If you say it is a very good sign that the things just got harder and harder, then it is good. However, due to things got harder, and I could not take time to think thoroughly, I have no confidence how accurate my answers are going to be. I felt it was a breeze for me for the first test-let which only took me less than 40 minutes. However, the second one got much harder, I flagged about 8 to 10 (It is useless because I did not have time to go back reconfirm it). The SIMs were overwhelmingly lengthy. I got at least two DRS and 2 enhanced SIMs. I doubt that the accounting manager in real world can finish the DRS very accurately in less than 20 minutes frame without being able to printing all documents out.

Generally speaking, I don't think the percentage guidance to each big section works for my exam at all as well. I felt like I spent months to study thousand of topics but there only less than 20% of the topics showed in the exam. Nothing or little showed related to several so-called important topics that I was taught.

Whatever, I felt thankful that my upset stomach (has been lasting for 10 plus days) didn't bother me at the exam and I finished all the testlets.

[iamstrong]

I take FAR on the 30th and i'm getting nervous about the SIMS. I took REG under the new format and the SIMS were insane.

I'm going to watch the BISK SIM review this weekend and hope to take home some lessons.

i'm so sick of FAR!

[SimonTheIceKing]

I wish I had checked out another71 forum before taking FAR on 7/12. I was really naive in thinking that Becker's Mock Exams is representative of the actual exam. Since I always finished SIMs very easily and early during the mock exam, I decided to spend 1 hour for each MCQ testlets because MCQ was always my weakest.

Then I get to the SIM parts. OH BOY it is NOTHING like the Becker simulations. So I ended up rushing and panicking hard for the last 2 hours of the exam. I would've been able to figure out most of the questions if only I had enough time because the materials were all very familiar to me. And what's worse is that I got 4 DRS which had thousands of documents that I had to read though, and I'm not a fast reader. My brain was fried by that point, I was panicking, and I couldn't fully comprehend what my eyes were reading. I did not expect to get that many DRS tbh, and DRS was my least favorite and worst type of SIM for me as I've mentioned before, I'm a slow reader.

I can't help but feel horrible about this whole exam, because I feel like the result would've been vastly different if I spent less time in MCQ and more on SIM.

[hmaevilla]

Here is my report for the new FAR. Sims have way too many supporting document questions. Which in real life is not going to slow you down too much but in a simulation will do so completely. In the real world you can take Document 4 and set it next to document 1 to do a compare and contrast quickly. In a simulation it is scroll write with a fat marker and scroll back to compare.

I understand the idea of trying to make the exam more like reality with the supporting documents but I would never do the amount of calculations in 4 hours at such a wild wide variety in real life. Humans PLAN work. We try to group similiar tasks together in order to reduce error and increase efficiency.

Yes I know we are being tested over a span of knowledge but there is only so much one can do with out being able to ORGANIZE information quickly in order to process the raw data into a meaningful accurate report.

The T\testing software has too many limitations for the amount of information provided to sort through in an efficient and effective way.

Ok rant over. I pray I passed. I was plugging in numbers as quick as I could.

[Cruzer]

@hmaevilla talk to @wannfree about the limitations of time for the exam. I am sure he would love to give you his input. He has it down to how to pass FAR under the time limitation. FAR is a monster with the new SIMs. Pray to god they give us some credit for taking the exam under extreme duress.

[Author]

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