[Anonymous]

Hello everyone,

With my 3rd attempt at FAR under my belt, I must say journal entries continue to show up more and more in the simulations. For a lot of the journal entries, I feel the review courses do a pretty good job of covering them. However, for some of the topics I feel as though the review courses really drop the ball. Many people on this forum recommend skipping sims and hammering out multiple choice until your sick. I’ve found this tactic using wiley test bank is great for tackling the real multiple choice and calculations on the exam. Unfortunatly wiley mcq’s do not do a good job of drilling the journal entries associated with those calculations. The sims in Wiley are not representative to what I have experienced on the exam. Its also frustrating that the online Wiley Simulations do not cover certain topics (e.g. gov, non-profit, troubled debt restructuring etc.). Anyway, I’m sure many of you are wondering the same thing. Why haven’t the review courses improved their coverage of simulations and associated journal entries? While journal entries are covered in the text they are definitely not adequately covered for all topics in the practice simulations. Thanks for listing to my rant 🙂

My current FAR arsenal includes: Wiley book, Wiley test bank, exam matrix, 2011 Yaeger course material, Ninja Audio and Notes

P.S. Jeff if you are reading this, I’d like to recommend a simulation Ninja/journal entry study supplement in the future 🙂

For those of you struggling with FAR simulations, what do you recommend? I know some people have copied every journal entry in there review. I’ve done this for certain topics and created a study guide, but not for all as it took a lot of time to create. Although maybe I just need to do it for every journal entry. Thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

I got my score report last week on my big old 73 and it said I was stronger on Sims and weaker on MCQ's and stronger on Gov/NFP and weaker on EVERYTHING else. So that being said, I agree 100% with you about review courses not going into enough detail on JE's. I have felt this way for a long time. On this last attempt, I did T-Accounts for every Sim that had a JE. Maybe it's just me, but if I can see the T-Account then I can come up with the JE. I used to have a Gov/NFP book that a professor gave me years ago. It was old and probably out of print but it had a list of JE's for just about everything Gov/NFP. I cannot find it to save my life! It's older than dirt but it really helped. I'll keep looking and if I find it I'll let you know.

[Red315]

I am in my final review using Becker and I am doing just that – writing down every different journal entry in a notebook. I plan on reviewing this before the exam on friday. Its a lot, but unfortunately its necessary.

I am saving my sims until I am done with my final review but I know the practice sims don't help much when it comes to the real ones.

Jeanne Aparicio

B - 75 (11/2011, First Attempt)
A - 88 (2/2012, First Attempt)
R - 89 (5/2012, First Attempt)
F - 79 (8/31/2012 First Attempt)

I AM DONE!!!!!! BECKER IS AWESOME!!!!

Licensed Florida CPA 09/2012

[MrsB]

I am not crazy about the wiley sims because it keeps giving me the same sims over and over. For example if I work 10 problems in one round it will give me 8-9 of the same problems in the second round. My review course (Roger) prints sims in his book so I work those when I start getting the same wiley sims over and over.

My advice on JEs is to start by using t accounts on your scratch paper and then write the JE. This helps me think the problem through better and has saved me on many exams when I got stuck.

F 80
A 86
B October
R November

[Author]

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