[Anonymous]

hey everyone and thanks ahead of time for your responses. I took a nice long break from studying after passing BEC in order to focus on busy season, but now I’m back at it in full swing! Oh how I don’t miss this…
My test date for FAR (last exam) is currently January 21st. I scheduled it on this date because: 1) It was the only available date at my testing location (sorry, not changing it!), and 2) I have to travel for work for the 3 weeks after that 🙁
I had this last week off on PTO and was able to get through chapters 1 through 7 in Becker in the last two weeks. I was planning on finishing 8 through 10 in the next two weeks which would leave me 2 weeks of review before my exam (I also took 2 days of PTO before my exam date). Unfortunately, I’m stressing out and don’t feel ready yet. I have been spending anywhere between 7 to 10 hours a day studying and I don’t feel like it’s sinking in. I need advice on: do I wait until I start reviewing to decide if I push it back? Or should I push through and take it on January 21st due to obligations I have for work the following three weeks? I’m hoping the two days off on PTO beforehand I can really do a bunch of review work plus the 2 final exams in Becker, but I’m still not sure if it’s enough?

Thanks again everyone!

[sallybreann]

My take is coming not from someone who has passed FAR but has my FAR exam on January 9th so I am in the review stage right now and living and breathing FAR at the moment. I used Becker to get through the material once and then purchased NINJA MCQ’s. I am now exclusively using NINJA MCQs for study and completely ditched Becker. (Except the Becker book – which I review and re-read all the time) I am learning a ton doing the Ninja MCQ’s and went from having zero confidence after going through the Becker material to feeling like I can pass this thing if I keep working hard and aim to do about 150 MCQ’s each day. My advice is to get through the rest of Becker and then purchase Ninja for $47 and do as many MCQ’s a day as you can until January 21st. I do see that you have passed other exams so you may have your own strategy down. I can tell you that I never felt like anything was sinking in going through Becker the first time and felt like a complete idiot and failure and now my confidence is slowly building and things are making sense. Best of luck to you!

[Anonymous]

I think a lot of it will depend on your personality and financial situation. Are you going to lose your money if you don't take the exam? If so, does that matter to you? If it does, then why not just take it?

Also, how will it stress you emotionally to go sit for 4 hours and take an exam you may not feel ready to take? If you're anything like me, I'm way too hard on myself. The fear of failure and not performing my best on a test would mentally hurt me enough to reschedule my test if I didn't feel like I had a pretty good shot at passing it. But other people don't have a problem saying “if I don't pass it I can just take it again” and it's not that big a deal to them.

If you aren't like me, might as well study as hard as you can and sit for it. Pray for the best, but mentally prepare yourself going in for a retake once you get back from traveling.

[Jdn9201]

Don't push your exam date back. One, with your work travelling, it will be very hard for you to keep up with studying consistently. Two, I don't think most people are 100% ready for FAR because of the volume of material that's covered. Two weeks should be plenty of time to review, especially since you are taking 2 days of PTO. I took and passed FAR in Feb 2016 and studied for 19 days, with a full time job. I would also say that if you're having trouble remembering what you're learning, you may want to back off the study time a bit. 7-10 hours a day is alot. The most I could handle was about 6 hrs a day, and that was on the weekends.

BEC - 88 8/29/15
REG - 82 11/14/15
AUD - 83 1/8/16
FAR - 80 2/29/16

[Anonymous]

When does your first exam expire?

I would either push hard and study and try and take it or postpone it until the end of Q1. You have passed 3 exams so you should have a good idea whether or not you feel ready. I wouldn't force it if I were you. Take it when you feel comfortable. Make sure you pass it this quarter before the 2017 changes come.

FAR is definitely a lot of material, but I think with your plan if you stick to it you should be okay. How comfortable are you so far with the material in chapters 1-7? Did you rush through it? It took me 2 times through all the homework before I felt comfortable with the material. Next two weeks focus most of your time on 8/9. 10 is still important but 8/9 is heavily tested.

[Author]

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