[Anonymous]

I’m sitting for my first exam on October 4th (two weeks from Tuesday). Panic is setting in as I’m only 3/4 the way through the material. I’m using Gleim and have 5 study units left of 20. The last three relate to governmental and not for profit accounting.

I want to spend as much time possible going back to review the older material and bust out as many practice questions as possible. Here’s my thought:

Would it be smart to just touch the surface of gov’t and NFP in order to give myself more time to review the rest of the material? I would just watch the short videos and do some practice questions to get a basic understanding. I would skip the reading or just quickly skim.

For people that have taken FAR – what was your experience with how many questions/how deep it went with gov’t and NFP? Would I be screwing myself to not fully understand that material?

[sancasuki]

That's the one section you don't want to skip. Probably 20% of the questions will be on government and NFP. You can also get simulations on government. You will see way more questions on government/NFP than on bonds or dollar-value LIFO.

[Anonymous]

If you did decently well on the first 15 study units, it's time to put some serious time into gov/NFP. Those sections are the difference between pass/fail for a lot of people. Two weeks is more than enough to get familiar with fund accounting, and it will pay off in the end.

Leave a couple days at the end to review the earlier stuff, get a good night's sleep, and call it a day.

[Anonymous]

Well that's just great! What types of questions? Were they pretty in-depth, conceptual, calculations, a good mixture? Is there a pretty good chance I'll get a sim on it?

[Anonymous]

Would I be better off skipping derivatives/hedging and cash flow statement instead (that's what I have left besides gov't and NFP)? Also, how much do I need to focus on IFRS differences?

[sancasuki]

I'd say so (skipping derivatives, etc…), but everyone gets a different test. You will likely see many questions on IFRS and government. Simulations too.

In general, the exam was way more conceptual than I thought it would be. Most of the calculation questions were pretty short. A few long ones but not many.

[Paydirt123]

Allie530: For starters, don't panic. So what if you scheduled October 4, if you don't feel confident reschedule, no big deal. As for IFRS vs GAAP, I used Becker, which provides an excellent summary at the end of the text for the significant differences, I found that helpful. Govt & NFP was real tough for me, I almost gave up I was so frustrated with it. I wouldn't skip anything, Circadian is quite right in saying every test is different.

[Anonymous]

I'd skip derivatives and take an hour to brush up on cash flow stuff. The thing about cash flow stuff is that it's basically just undoing accruals/accumulated accts, and if you can go forward making accruals correctly, you can probably go backward as well.

[Valar Dohaeris]

I had a government-wide Cash Flow Statement for one of my Sims that sucked, really sucked.

Aside from that, govt/NFP was a solid portion of my test. Some softballs like identify the type of fund. Some MCQs tested me on 2-3 govt/NFP concepts.

I always tell everybody to start with govt/NFP when studying FAR, because it seems like candidates take one semester of this material at best.

BEC - 85
AUD - 81
REG - 84
FAR - 7/24/16

[Anonymous]

^ I had the same Sim and was pissed off bc I knew the For Profit SCF's super well and didn't study NFP SCF's too much. I gave it my best though. Hoping for a 75 on the Beast!

[Trees202]

Do NOT skip NFP & governmental! Especially if you didn't take it in school.

[Anonymous]

It really depends on how well prepared are you right now on all other topics. I think it will take you a week to learn well NFP, Gov acctg. For derivatives, you can skim through, but I recommend you to know well the statement of cash flows. I had seen SCFs multiple times in college, but never stuck on my head until squeeze it in while studying for FAR. I usually think 2 weeks for review is essential (It took me total of 72 hours of review to connect the dots), but 1 week with a good 40-50 hours might be doable.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the advice, everyone! I went through CF Statement today for about an hour and feel like I already know most of it from working with ours at work. I've completely skipped derivatives and will get to it if I have time. But for now my plan is to get through as much government and NFP as I possibly can this week (I'm taking Friday off so that helps), then begin my review process this weekend. Why Gleim waited until the very end for government and NFP when apparently it's tested heavily is beyond me! Hopefully my plan will be enough!

Best of luck to you all!

[sancasuki]

In CPAExcel, they put it at the end too. I was worried I was going to run out of time and everyone on this forum was saying government was very important, so I skipped over most of “Specific Transactions, Events, Disclosures” and went ahead and did Government/NFP. Then I went back and did the rest of “Specific Transactions…”

[Anonymous]

Give yourself some good time and fresh mind for governmental accounting. IMHO, that is the worst chapter in FAR and what makes this test into a nightmare to keep everything straight in your head.

[Author]

Replies