[Art Van Delay]

Anecdotally, how heavily is FAR curved? I have a friend who didn’t finish the exam and still scored >90. To me, that indicates a sizable curve; although I’m not sure how much he didn’t get to and how well he did on what he was able to finish — still, I feel like this one has to be curved the most heavily of all the 4 parts.

I really, truly hate FAR and I’m trying to convince myself to learn it to the best of my ability and hope for a nice curve. The whole section just sucks. It’s backwards. In the real world, I’ll never have to know complex bond accounting off the top of my head.

Here’s what happens when I’m not sure of something –

Person: Hey, Van Delay, how do we account for X?

(Van Delay looks it up)

Van Delay: Like this.

You should be allowed to use accounting guidance during FAR.

[JohnWayneIsGod]

From the AICPA

‘The CPA Examination is NOT curved. Every candidate’s score is entirely independent of other candidates’ Examination results.'

https://www.aicpa.org/becomeacpa/cpaexam/forcandidates/faq/pages/computer_faqs_3.aspx

FAR - 80

Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.

-John Wayne

[tcheney3]

The curve isn't in relation to the scores of other candidates, but that doesn't mean your score is a reflection of the percentage of questions you answered correctly. You could score a 90 and only get 75% of the questions right. It depends on the difficulty level of your MCQ's.

BEC - 82
REG - 86
FAR - 85
AUD - 84 and I'm out!!!!!
Ethics - 95
In Skynet's Honor:
Act I: Shutdown Skynet and prevent Judgment Day.
Act II: Add a comma and three letters to my title.
Act III: Time Travel and marry a young Denise Richards (and prevent subsequent plastic surgery),return to present.
Act IV: Serve as Successor to Elon Musk as CEO of Tesla.
Act V: Ensure Judgment Day has been stopped. Utopia achieved.

[Missy]

Heres the way the exam works. Each question is given a predetermined value (they use pretest questions to help with that effort.)

So if the entire exam was 4 questions long and you needed 3 points to pass the weighting might look like this:

Q1 . 1/2 point

Q2 1 point

Q3 2 point

Q4 1/2 point

You would absolutely have to get q3 correct to pass, but of course you have no idea which questions have more or less points assigned to them. Conversely you could get three questions right (1.2 and 4) and walk out without a pass.

This is an extreme example of course, but hope it helps you to understand. If your friend didn't finish and got better than a 90 (assuming he is being honest) he.may have left Q1 or Q4 blank and not had too big of an effect from it.

Licensed Massachusetts Non Reporting CPA since 2012
Finance/Admin/HR Manager

[Author]

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