[Tom]

Hello all,

I took FAR today and I’m a little concerned.

It seemed to me that about 50% of my questions were related to governmental and not-for-profit accounting.

Has anyone else had this kind of experience?

I knew that these two topics supposedly make up about 20%, but I had a lot more questions.

What do you guys think? Should I be worried? Is this a good sign that such difficult questions came up frequently?

I really don’t know what to think and I am going to go nuts for almost a month while waiting for my score.

[slacpa]

Can you give us an idea what we should study based on your sim's? you dont have to say what you had per say but you can give folks an idea as to what to look over the most prior to taking your exam, if that helps. but every exam is different so I am not sure if that helps. maybe

[Anonymous]

I took FAR July 1 (so I don't know my score yet) and i agree – most of my questions were Gov/NFP. I can't say it was 50%, but it was definitely at least 30%. The questions were NOT as hard as Becker's, but they felt a bit “different” like I haven't seen them before. Not more difficult though.

[Anonymous]

edit: my sims covered cash flows, gov/nfp, inventory costs, bank reconciliation, authoritative literature, and i can't remember what the other 2 were….

[Anonymous]

lizbette – this is true. It's an “adaptive” test which gets harder. Personally I couldn't really tell which testlet was hard and which was easy. They all felt the same to me (?). But anyway, the harder the questions get, that means you're answering questions correctly. The harder ones weigh more points which means you need to get fewer right to reach a 75%. (remember, you're starting score is 0%. You need to build your way up to 75% to pass).

[Anonymous]

slacpa, aside from the research question, you have to be prepared for anything on the sims, that's the honest truth. There's not much I can help you with there. You should make sure you have a thorough understanding of all the concepts, because any one of them could legitimately be tested on. As you're going back through the material try and anticipate how a particular concept could be tested as a simulation. If you use Becker, doing the practice simulations can also give you a great feel of the format to expect.

[Tom]

If my original post on this thread was a violation of the AICPA disclosure policies, I would like to take it down. Is that possible for me to do or does Jeff have to do it?

[EvanH]

Yesterday, I sat for FAR. Hopefully this is it for me, but I still didn't feel warm and fuzzy when I left Prometric. The testlets didn't obviously get harder and I left one simulation blank that I'm trying to convince myself was pretest material. None of the material I encountered was overly complex. I've used a combination of Gleim and Becker for the past three sections and felt well prepared for “hard” questions (possibly explaining why I didn't sense the questions getting harder in testlets #2 or #3). The killers for me are not leaving enough time for the simulations and easy questions where you're required to remember a discrete fact.

Over the last four years, I've sat twelve times and left the testing centers demoralized each time (even when I earned 94 on AUD and 88 on my retake). In order to get any sleep, I'll have to remind myself that I couldn't sense the testlets getting harder when I passed REG either. My gut has been right every time I've passed or not passed, and I think I got this one by a few points. Even so, the next three weeks are going to suck like they always do.

[GeauxAwayCPA]

I felt like I got a ton of Government and NFP on my first attempt. Not sure of percentages but I just remember wishing they would stop coming!

@Sang those are the three topics that I was weaker on and caused me to fail my first attempt with a 72. how are you approaching studying for Govt, NFP, and IFRS for round 2?

[Author]

Replies