I don't know if I am a dummy as well but I never understood that over studying concept. FAR has a lot of material and depending on what a persons background is they need more time. I haven't done a journal entry for close to seven years before studying for FAR. So I felt that my first 100 to 150 hours was a refresh of my accounting education. Now if you are a senior accountant somewhere you probably don't need anymore than 150 hours.
If you are going to study for FAR over a few months here are a few things I have learned in the last two months that I wish I knew back then:
Do not learn a chapter and then wait until your Review to get back to it. FAR is so big that every chapter you learn needs to be constantly reviewed so you can hold on to that precious information.
Do all of the related questions for a chapter before moving on. This seems like common sense, but I took a master the concepts before questions approach and now I realize that some of the things that I thought I understood are in fact more complex when given in CPA question format.
Do complex computational problems regularly by either printing them out or marking them in your CPA program.
Do not take a week off in the middle of your study period. Taking one week off was like losing two weeks because it took me at least one week to get to the competency I was at before.
This is advice coming from a person who has not passed an exam but who has learned a lot by studying ineffectively.
I spoke to an ancient wise man who sent me on a mushroom induced journey through an ancient forest to find the key to passing the CPA exam. A talking spider monkey told me to throw the last of my drinking water in the dirt to find what I was looking for. So I followed his instructions and the following message appeared in the soil:
"Do 5000 multiple choice questions for each section"
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