[Anonymous]

I’m graduating with my Accounting degree very soon and I would like to jump into studying for FAR! I plan to start studying around the third week of December and taking the exam early February. My target is to study around 25-30 hours a week or about 5 hours a day. I will have no job or classes or any other obligations.

I made a structured plan on the Becker website as I will be using the Becker study system, please look at it here and let me know what you think as I do not have any experience studying for the CPA:

https://i.imgur.com/tvBruS8.jpg

[MrCPA511]

It's great that you have a schedule and you should do everything in your power to stick to it. However, you will almost always encounter a section or chapter that will take you WAY longer to grasp and it will throw your entire schedule off. So just make sure you are aware of that possibility as you plan. Just to give you some insight, areas that I took extra time on were:

F2

F6

F7

F10

FAR - 86 7/2014
AUD - 95 10/2014
REG - 87 1/22/15
BEC - 84 7/2015

[Kimboroni]

That's a good point. When I made my schedule, I made sure to take the number of pages in the chapter into account. So some weeks I did 3 chapters and some weeks only 1. I don't know about Becker, but with Wiley there was a huge variation in the number of pages in each chapter.

2 weeks of review seems good. Make sure to catch up if you get off track with the chapter work, since you don't want to eat into your review time at the end. It is so easy to forget the early stuff, especially since FAR has so much material. So you need that review time.

AUD 84 (1/9/14-Wiley books/TB + free materials)
FAR 83 (5/21/14-the above + NINJA 10 Pt Combo Lite)
REG 84 (7/9/14-Wiley books/TB + NINJA Audio/FC/Notes)
BEC 76 (10/5/14-Wiley books/TB + NINJA Audio/FC)

Disclaimer: My ninja avatar is not meant to imply that I have any affiliation with this site other than being a forum member. That's a pic of a T-shirt that my daughter gave me for my birthday. 🙂

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the response. Yeah I am sure I may end up spending more time on a section than expected. However, I could just eat into my scheduled review period, two weeks seems rather long for a review period, doesn't it?

[Anonymous]

@Kimboroni, I submitted my response before I saw yours. So I guess eating into my review isn't such a good idea. I suppose if I struggle with a specific section, I'll just spend more than 5 hours a day on it seeing as I have no other obligations.

[MrCPA511]

2 weeks is not long at all because you will be pounding through 2000 MCQs and you also have 2 becker final exams to finish.

FAR - 86 7/2014
AUD - 95 10/2014
REG - 87 1/22/15
BEC - 84 7/2015

[Anonymous]

It's a doable plan. For reference I was in a similar situation. I finished my master of accountancy in May. I started to study at the beginning of July and took the exam at the very end of August. I was spending 5 to 6 hours a day studying and on the day of the exam I had gone through every single Becker MCQ at least twice with most sections at least three times. Two weeks before the exam, I entered into my “review” phase where the my goal was to go through every single chapter of Becker and do every single MCQ one last time. I also looked over the SIMs that I was most uncomfortable with during this period. I passed with an 84.

The one thing I will warn you about is burn out. By the time I finished the exam, I was so burnt out on study that it was really hard to motivate myself for the next portion. But if you are going to burn out on a portion, it has to be FAR. There's a reason it's known as “The Beast.”

[Anonymous]

I'll also add in a final note. I didn't do the final exams in Becker. When doing the MCQ, if I made a mistake, I wanted to know then and there that I made a mistake and not find out 2 hours later after finishing the thing when I have no idea what my original thinking on the question was. But different people study different ways and if the final exams are helpful for you, more power to you.

[JamesBJames]

Your schedule is basically what I did when I studied FAR. I tried to do two sections a week with one day off in the week whenever I just didn't feel like studying. ~30 hours a week. It worked out pretty well.

Like @MrCPA511 said above, there will be a few sections that are harder than the others. F2 is the big one. I thought F5, F6, and F7 were also all pretty challenging.

Eating into your review time isn't that big of a deal, IMO. I never did a full two weeks of review. FAR was 1.5 weeks and the other three were 1 week.

FAR: May 1st, 2014 - 91
AUD: May 29th, 2014 - 97!
BEC: July 16th, 2014 - 91
REG: August 29th, 2014 - 88

Licensed December 2015

Feel free to add me on LinkedIn by clicking my username!

[MrCPA511]

The final exams in Becker actually give you some questions that you've never seen before in your homework, so I would strongly suggest you take them so you have an opportunity to review some new questions you may have missed on each practice exam.

FAR - 86 7/2014
AUD - 95 10/2014
REG - 87 1/22/15
BEC - 84 7/2015

[Kimboroni]

James, you still ended up with 1½ weeks to review for FAR, so it seems like you were still keeping an eye on not eating up much review time with chapter work. The problem is if you don't keep an eye on that, you end up with almost no review time, which happens all too often I'm sure, and usually results in a fail, especially for FAR.

AUD 84 (1/9/14-Wiley books/TB + free materials)
FAR 83 (5/21/14-the above + NINJA 10 Pt Combo Lite)
REG 84 (7/9/14-Wiley books/TB + NINJA Audio/FC/Notes)
BEC 76 (10/5/14-Wiley books/TB + NINJA Audio/FC)

Disclaimer: My ninja avatar is not meant to imply that I have any affiliation with this site other than being a forum member. That's a pic of a T-shirt that my daughter gave me for my birthday. 🙂

[JamesBJames]

Oh, for sure — you don't want to fall so far behind that you have NO review time. It's important to spend a little bit of time going over past material and getting yourself ready for the exam.

I guess, to be clearer, I think two weeks (if you study 25+ hours a week) is just a little long for review purposes. Don't feel guilty about taking up a few days of it here and there, but don't ignore the final review altogether.

FAR: May 1st, 2014 - 91
AUD: May 29th, 2014 - 97!
BEC: July 16th, 2014 - 91
REG: August 29th, 2014 - 88

Licensed December 2015

Feel free to add me on LinkedIn by clicking my username!

[Jasminekoko]

@JamesBJames: I usuall cram in the last 2 weeks review and the day before the exam I stayed up late going over it. Not working out well. Took FAR in January 2013, this April 2015 I'm giving it another shot. May I ask what kind of material you were using for FAR review? I have Becker and Final Review Becker, should I supplement with something else? I can devote 8-9 hours a day to study. Please help me with the study strategy as well as the time wise to combat this beast. Thanks so much.

[Anonymous]

Make sure you hit Government and NFP hard. (chapters 8, 9)

They're easy test questions as many of them are conceptual and only a few are truly computational. Chapters 8 and 9 make up 25%~ of the test and take it from someone who took FAR last week.. definitely know your governmental and NFP concepts!

Good luck.

[AJE]

What does everyone mean when they refer to as “review time”?

Does that simply mean re-doing the homework and sims from F1 to F9 and making sure you understand all the concepts, math, etc or is there some actual other review process?

I plan to be finished with Becker about Feb 3rd (test on the 26th). From the 3rd to the 25th I'll try to do all the homework again, re-work all the simulations (i'm awful at the sims and JE's), take a practice test about the 9th, repeat the process (hwk, sims, and take the other practice test the 22nd).

I didn't get the FAR Final Review.

FAR 91 - 04/16
BEC 87 - 05/15
REG 77 - 07/27
AUD 92 - 08/31

[Anonymous]

First things first, keep an eye on timestamps. The original post was over a month ago so if you direct responses to the OP, they might not be relevant today.

Sundizz: Everyone is going to have their own definition of “review time.” But, in general, I look at it like this. Most of us here have purchased a Review Course for the section we're working on. I'm using Becker for example. Becker contains video lectures for each chapter (10 chapter for FAR with each chapter containing sub topics within them) and a ton of MCQ and SIMs. “Review” for me starts when I've finished all of the lectures and gone through the MCQ and SIMs once. At that point I shouldn't be learning anything new. I just need to review what was covered and concentrate on my weak areas.

[Author]

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